The
Sudanese regime is on its way to becoming the next Iran, regardless of
whether President Omar Bashir remains in power or not. The country is
moving towards becoming a full-blown Sharia state, comparable to Iran,
Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan under the Taliban. Towards that end,
500-700,000 Christians have been told to pack up and leave by April 8 or they’ll be treated as foreigners.
The
Bashir regime has always been an enemy of the U.S. and those who value
human rights but it is now doing everything it can to please its
Islamist opposition. The regime knew it would raise the ire of the
Islamists when it allowed the mostly-Christian region of South Sudan to
become an independent country. In the hopes of staving off a rebellion,
Bashir promised to remodel his country based on Sharia Law with Arabic
as the only official language. He also promised not to seek another term
in 2015.
Bashir’s
most powerful opponent is a cleric named Hasan al-Turabi, the leader of
the Sudanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is hard to overstate
his impact on the growth of Islamic extremism and terrorism. He has been
called "Sudan's Osama" and "The Pope of Terrorism."
After helping Bashir come to power, Turabi used his base in Sudan to
build close relationships with every virtually single Islamic terrorist
group and government. He worked hard to bring together secularists like
Saddam Hussein, Sunni radicals like Osama Bin Laden and Shiite radicals
like Iran and Hezbollah into a common anti-Western front. Turabi became
close with Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, though he today criticizes some of their tactics as being “counterproductive.”
After South Sudan seceded, the Islamists demanded that Bashir made good on his word. They formed the Islamic Constitution Front and drafted a Sharia-based constitution.
The imam of Khartoum’s Grand Mosque endorsed it and said Bashir must
“either rule by Islam or go.” Other members of the group explicitly said
they’d revolt if their wishes aren’t granted.
Bashir declared that that any person
whose great-grandparents were born in the south or is part of a
southern ethnic group will no longer be considered a citizen after April
8. That means that the country’s 500-700,000 Christians must get out
now or have their rights reduced to that of a foreigner. This is nowhere
in the news. Imagine if Israel had issued such an order to 100
Palestinians.
The Sudanese Christians are facing increasing persecution. In February, eight bombs were dropped on a Christian college
built by Franklin Graham’s charity. Humanitarian aid is being blocked
to those in the Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile Provinces, forcing the
U.S. to consider an operation to rescue about 500,000 people from imminent famine. Any presence of foreign troops in this area would probably trigger a call to jihad by Islamist clerics and possibly the Bashir regime.
No comments:
Post a Comment