President Omar al-Bashir [2] announced Oct. 12 that Sudan will adopt an Islamic constitution. The official creation of an Islamic state, three months after the formal split between Sudan and South Sudan , is intended to more accurately reflect the religious affiliation of its population now that the mainly Christian south is an independent country, Bashir said. "Ninety eight percent of the people are Muslims and the new constitution will reflect this," the president told students in Khartoum in a speech. "The official religion will be Islam and Islamic law the main source [of the constitution]. We call it a Muslim state." Bashir remains wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and genocide in Dafur. The constitutional revision raises grave concerns the more than one million southerners living in Sudan, who have already been given until the spring to leave and are treated as foreigners. They have lost government jobs and now need work and residency permits to stay in the north. (Reuters [3], Jurist [4], Oct. 13)
See our last posts on Sudan [5] and the struggle within Islam [6].
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