Religious Conflict in Sudan

Today, the refugee crisis in Sudan is one of the most widely reported humanitarian concerns in the world. However, many people are unsure why millions of people have been displaced from their homes. The answer is a religious conflict that has been developing in Sudan for hundreds of years. The root causes of religious conflict in Sudan between the Muslim North and Christian South stem from primarily political sources, including historical favoritism to northern Sudanese areas, unequal political representation, and governmental oppression and marginalization of certain religious groups. For thousands of years, these causes have created boundaries that are ingrained in Sudanese history. For centuries, various Sudanese political powers throughout the country have oppressed and taken advantage of different minority groups, causing a deepening rift between parties with opposing ideologies. From the period of colonization, there has been a forced separation between the Northern and Southern parts of Sudan . Since the time of Sudanese independence, Muslim governments in the North have attempted to enforce laws of oppression and “Islamification” against the Christian and animist South (Deng, 2001). This has caused a rising conflict between Muslims and minority groups who have “a vision, of a secular, democratic Sudan” (Deng 2001, 1). Fueling this conflict are the differing opinions between the North and South of the role of religion within government. The Muslims believe that these two institutions should be fully integrated, while the Southerners, who are generally more Christian and secular, believe that there should be a separation between the two. It seemed that best way to resolve this conflict in a permanent way was to separate Sudan into two independent countries, so that each country could form a governing body that rightly represents the interests and ideology of its constituents. However, when South Sudan gained autonomy in 2011, the conflict between the two

Cited: Deng, F.M. 1995. War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. Washington, D.C: The Brookings Publishing Institution Johnson, D. H. 2003. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars. Indiana University Press. Military and cultural factionalism and certain historical events have led up to the current state of civil war in Sudan. Metz, H.C. 1991. Sudan: A Country Study. Washington, D.C. Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. retrieved from http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Sudan.html