The War in Sudan and Its Implications for the Umma

Qur’an 5:2.

Qur’an 3:103.

This hadith is found in multiple narrations; the one cited here is Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 2586c.

“Sudan Protection Cluster - Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (January 2026),” ReliefWeb, January 13, 2026, reliefweb.int.

“Sudan: 1000 Days of War Deepen the World’s Worst Health and Humanitarian Crisis,” World Health Organization, January 9, 2026, who.int.

“Sudan: 14 Million Displaced; Hunger and Attacks on Health Continue as War Enters Fourth Year,” United Nations, April 10, 2026, news.un.org; and “Sudan: As Children Continue to Suffer, School Remains a Distant Hope,” United Nations, September 12, 2025, news.un.org; United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Sudan Key Facts and Figures (As of 31 December 2025),” ReliefWeb, January 27, 2026, reliefweb.int.

“Sudan: UN Report Details Horrific Patterns of Violations Committed during RSF Takeover of Zamzam IDP Camp,” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, December 18, 2025, ohchr.org.

For just a small sliver of the testimonies from victims as well as the direct video evidence of crimes, see “Sudan: Mass Atrocities in Captured Darfur City,” Human Rights Watch, October 29, 2025, hrw.org. For more on video evidence, including videos that could be considered tantamount to confessions, see Daniel Hilton and Muhammad Amin, “RSF Fighters Film Themselves Massacring Sudanese Fleeing el-Fasher,” Middle East Eye, October 28, 2025, middleeasteye.net.

See Sara Abbas, Nisrin Elamin, Rabab Elnaiem, and Abdelraouf Omer, “In Sudan, the People’s Revolution Versus the Elite’s Counterrevolution,” Hammer & Hope 4 (Summer 2024), hammerandhope.org; and Hamid Khalafallah, “Sudan’s Counterrevolutionary War: The Systematic Targeting of Pro-Democracy Activists,” Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, April 15, 2025, timep.org.

I have been unable to locate a precise attribution of how many total fatalities the SAF and RSF have respectively caused. However, the RSF is overwhelmingly depicted, both in eyewitness accounts and in media reports, as the more ruthless party. The RSF’s capture of El Fasher and the ensuing massacres stand out as one of the most gruesome episodes of the war. See, for example, Daniel Andersen et al., “RSF Systematic Mass Killings and Body Disposal in El-Fasher, North Darfur 26 October-28 November 2025,” Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale School of Public Health, medicine.yale.edu. The United Nations’ expert monitors have also treated RSF violence as categorically more brutal. A September 2025 report from the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan found that “the Rapid Support Forces’ conduct may also constitute crimes against humanity, including persecution and extermination.” Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, “Sudan: A War of Atrocities,” Human Rights Council, September 5, 2025, ohchr.org.

Tobi Raji, “UAE Is Facing Growing Outrage Over Its Support of Sudan’s Paramilitary,” Washington Post, November 15, 2025, washingtonpost.com.

Mark Townsend, “Leaked UN Experts Report Raises Fresh Concerns over UAE’s Role in Sudan War,” The Guardian, April 14, 2025, theguardian.com. More recently, Chad has grappled with RSF attacks. See Noé Hochet-Bodin, “Au Tchad, les feux menaçants de la guerre soudanaise,” Le Monde, January 27, 2026, lemonde.fr.

Bashir Mohamed Caato, “Exclusive: Inside the UAE’s Secret Sudan War Operation at Somalia’s Bosaso,” Middle East Eye, October 31, 2025, middleeasteye.net. Emirati-Somali relations, however, have worsened after Israeli recognition of Somaliland. See Bashir Mohamed Caato, “UAE Removing Its Military from Bosaso after Angry Somalia Ends Agreement,” Middle East Eye, January 12, 2026, middleeasteye.net.

Giulia Paravicini and Reade Levinson, “Ethiopia Builds Secret Camp to Train RSF Fighters,” Reuters, February 10, 2026, reuters.com.

On Egyptian support, see Declan Walsh, Malachy Browne, Eric Schmitt, and Nick Cumming-Bruce, “The Secret Egyptian Base Behind Sudan’s Drone War,” New York Times, February 1, 2026, nytimes.com; on Saudi Arabian support, see “Saudi Arabia Arms Deal for Sudan, a New Engagement,” Ayin Network, February 9, 2026, 3ayin.com.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, “Sudan’s Brutal, Forgotten War,” Wall Street Journal, 1 August 2025, wsj.com.

Gert Van Hecken, “Gaza to Sudan: Moral Consistency as a Colonial Alibi,” The New Humanitarian, January 12, 2026, thenewhumanitarian.org.

Menna Farouk and Bahira Amin, “Sudan Army Chief’s Islamist Ties Complicate Peace Efforts,” Barron’s, December 2, 2025, barrons.com. See also Khalid Abdelaziz, “Insight: Sudan’s Islamists Plot Post-War Comeback by Supporting Army,” Reuters, July 25, 2025, reuters.com.

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 2641.

“Sudan, A Case Study,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed February 13, 2025, ushmm.org.

See, for example, Nisrin Elamin, “The Politics of Hunger in Sudan,” Transition Magazine 38, 2025, transitionmagazine.fas.harvard.edu.

For biographies of al-Turabi, see John Esposito and John Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam (Oxford University Press, 2001), chap. 6; and W. J. Berridge, Hasan Al-Turabi: Islamist Politics and Democracy in Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

The administration of US President Bill Clinton placed Sudan on the list of “state sponsors of terrorism” in 1993, a policy that revolved more around political leverage than security concerns; exemptions to the sanctions, notably regarding gum Arabic (a key Sudanese export) as early as 1998 and later pertaining to oil as well, suggest that commercial interests often trumped blanket application of the designation. Successive US administrations treated delisting Sudan as a bargaining chip; eventually, in the context of the Abraham Accords, Sudan was removed from the list in December 2020.

Berridge, Hasan Al-Turabi, 214.

Noah Salomon, For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State (Princeton University Press, 2016), 3–4.

Ahmed Kodouda, “Sudan’s Islamist Resurrection: al-Turabi and the Successor Regime,” African Arguments 24, February 2016, africanarguments.org.

Alex de Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power (Polity Press, 2015), esp. chaps. 2 and 5. The quotation is from p. 16.

For an influential article on coup-proofing, see James Quinlivan, “Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East,” International Security 24, no. 2 (1999): 131–65.

Isaac Chotiner, “The Failed ‘Coup-Proofing’ Behind the Recent Violence in Sudan,” New Yorker, April 20, 2023, newyorker.com.

Harry Verhoeven, “Surviving Revolution and Democratisation: The Sudan Armed Forces, State Fragility and Security Competition,” Journal of Modern African Studies 61, no. 3 (2023): 413–37.

For a concise history of the revolution and its background, see Willow Berridge, Justin Lynch, Raga Makawi, and Alex de Waal, Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy: The Promise and Betrayal of a People's Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Mai Hassan, “Coordinated Dis-Coordination,” American Political Science Review 118, no. 1 (2024): 163–77.

Dalal Daoud, “The Rise and Fall of Sudanese Islamists,” The Maydan, February 24, 2022, themaydan.com.

Nisrin Elamin and Tahani Ismail, “The Many Mothers of Sudan’s Revolution,” Al Jazeera, May 4, 2019, aljazeera.com. The full text of the poem, whose date of composition I have not been able to pin down, is available here, along with video of Salah reciting it: facebook.com.

Azza Ahmed Abdel Aziz, “The Third Sudanese Revolution Reinstates Women from all Walks of Life onto the Map of Sudanese Public Life,” Noria Research, May 1, 2019, noria-research.com.

“Sudan’s Violent Crackdown on Protesters in Khartoum,” Human Rights Watch, November 17, 2019, hrw.org.

“Changes in Criminal Law as Sudan Annuls Apostasy Death Sentence,” Al Jazeera, July 12, 2020, aljazeera.com.

“Safeguarding Sudan’s Revolution,” International Crisis Group, October 21, 2019, crisisgroup.org.

Joshua Craze and Kholood Khair, “The Remains of the JPA: The Unlearnt Lessons of the Juba Peace Agreement,” Rift Valley Institute, November 2023, riftvalley.net.

Bayan Abubakr, “The Abraham Accords and Sudan’s Global Counterrevolution,” Middle East Report 315/316, 2025, merip.org.

Khalid Mustafa Medani, “Authoritarian Legacies and the War in Sudan,” CCAS Newsmagazine, May 16, 2025, ccas.georgetown.edu; see also Khalid Medani, Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2021), esp. chap. 5.

On the history of Islam in Darfur, see R. S. O’Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate: A History (Hurst, 2008).

Jalale Getachew Birru, “Blue Nile: From Peripheral Front to Central Battleground in the Sudan Conflict,” ACLED, January 26, 2026, acleddata.com.

Hanna Duggal and Marium Ali, “The Drones Being Used in Sudan: 1,000 Attacks Since April 2023,” Al Jazeera, February 3, 2026, aljazeera.com.

Hamid Khalafallah, “Beyond the Battlefield: Sudan’s Virtual Propaganda Warzone,” Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, January 14, 2025, timep.org.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, “The Truth About the War in Sudan,” Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2025, wsj.com.

Hassan Alnaser and Omar al-Farouk, “Out of Scorched Earth: The Future of the RSF Lies in Abdel Rahim Dagalo’s Hands,” Mada Masr, April 3, 2025, madamasr.com.

United Nations Panel of Experts on Sudan, report, January 15, 2024, p. 2, docs.un.org.

Jérôme Bertrand of Handicap International made this point in an interview with RFI. See “Soudan: le camp de réfugiés de Tawila, c’est «la population d’une ville comme Lyon laissée à l’abandon»,” RFI, November 17, 2025, rfi.fr.

See, for example, Mat Nashed, “After Splinter, Can Sudan’s Anti-War Coalition Reinvent Itself?,” Al Jazeera, February 20, 2025, aljazeera.com.

Elfadil Ibrahim, “Abdalla Hamdok: Winning the West, Losing Sudan,” Arab Weekly, February 4, 2026, thearabweekly.com.

Jennifer Hansler, “Trump Has Pledged to Help End the Fighting in Sudan. Will It Be Enough?” CNN, November 28, 2025, cnn.com.

Qur’an 2:155.

Qur’an 2:45, 2:153; 103:3.

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 3601.

Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, 12th ed. (Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1996), 3:223–32.

Qur’an 65:1.

Qur’an 2:251; 22:40.

Qur’an 30:2–5.

Qur’an 30:5; 33:71.

Qur’an 4:59.

Yaḥyā ibn Sharaf al-Nawawī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim bi-sharḥ al-Nawawī (Al-Azhar, 1929), 12:223; Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān (Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2012), 1:573–74.

Ovamir Anjum, Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 52–53 and see also chap. 1 more broadly.

Nathan Brown, “Who or What Is the Wali al-Amr: The Unposed Question,” Oñati Socio-Legal Series 10, no. 5 (2020): 985–1000, p. 985, opo.iisj.net.

On these dynamics in Libya, see Frederic Wehrey and Anouar Boukhars, Salafism in the Maghreb: Politics, Piety, and Militancy (Oxford University Press, 2019), chap. 6.

Walaa Quisay and Thomas Parker, “On the Theology of Obedience: An Analysis of Shaykh Bin Bayyah and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s Political Thought,” The Maydan, January 8, 2019, themaydan.com.

See, for example, a Facebook post from January 16, 2026: facebook.com. As of February 2026, the post had thirteen likes and other reactions.

Al-Nūr ʿĀdil, “Muzammil Faqīrī: al-Dāʿiya alladhī ḥamala liwāʾ al-thawra al-muḍadda,” Al Jazeera, September 25, 2019, aljazeera.net.

See Muḥammad Samīr, “Muzammil Faqīrī bayn al-Burhān wa-Ḥamīdtī: Limādhā sakata ʿan al-khawārij,” Mā Baʿd al-Madkhaliyya, YouTube, December 21, 2023, youtube.com.

Al-Nawawī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim bi-sharḥ al-Nawawī, 12:224.

“Sudan: Armed Group Allied to the Military Attacks Village,” Human Rights Watch, February 25, 2025, hrw.org.

Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 4:153.

Qur’an 49:9.

Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān (Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 2006), 19:375–76. Imam al-Qurṭubī alludes to a third scenario wherein the two factions are fighting because of a misunderstanding that other believers should then address with proofs, but this possibility seems to me to be less applicable to Sudan.

Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 4:150.

Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 4:152.

Jacob Mundy has a penetrating analysis of the costs and benefits of amnesty and national forgetting in his book Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence: Conflict Science, Conflict Management, Antipolitics (Stanford University Press, 2015).

Muzan Alneel, “Sudan’s Revolutionary Path against War,” Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, June 2, 2023, rosalux.de.

See, for example, Alamaldeen Ismail, “‘I Volunteer Because I Love My People’: On the Ground with Darfur’s Mutual Aid Volunteers,” The New Humanitarian, January 8, 2026, thenewhumanitarian.org.

Qur’an 13:11; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 49.

Sunan al-Nasāʾī, no. 4209 and Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, no. 2174. Imam al-Tirmidhī grades this hadith as ḥasan.

Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Mubārakpūrī, Tuḥfat al-Aḥwadhī bi-sharḥ jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī (Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), 6:396.

Musnad Aḥmad, no. 2803.

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 4347.

See Yousef Wahb, “Qunut Nazilah: A Guide to Making Dua for the Oppressed in Times of War,” Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, January 29, 2024, yaqeeninstitute.org.

As an example of how difficult access can be, Doctors Without Borders was only allowed to visit El Fasher in January, nearly three months after the RSF captured it, and the visit was restricted to just four hours, “under the constant supervision of security officials.” See “MSF Finds El Fasher Largely Destroyed and Empty During Visit,” Médecins Sans Frontières, January 28, 2026, msf.org.

Qur’an 4:135.