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W. Wesley McDonald
The parallels
between the present day and the historical Mahdi's religiously
motivated warriors may help us better understand the factors that
have shaped bin Laden and his form of militant Islam.
 efore Osama bin Laden, it might be argued, there was the
Mahdi. Over 120 years ago, a messianic leader united the tribes of
the Sudan in a bloody revolt against their Turkish-Egyptian masters.
Proclaiming that Islam had been corrupted and defiled by
"foreigners," this Islamic warrior declared a jihad against the
"outsiders." For a time, he astonished the world as his followers,
equipped only with sticks, spears, and swords, crushed the Egyptian
armies sent against them and thwarted the ambitions of Great
Britain, then the reigning military power.
Although not
alike in all significant respects--the Mahdi, for example, came from
humble origins, whereas bin Laden is the scion of a Saudi
billionaire--the desert warrior and the peripatetic leader of al
Qaeda show some striking similarities. There is a shared connection
with Sudan, from which bin Laden was expelled in 1996. Both men
tangled militarily with the major power of their eras. Both believed
themselves to be directed by Allah to lead a holy war, to eradicate
the corrupting influence of the West from Muslim lands and, in the
process, spread Islam. The parallels between the lives of these two
religiously motivated warriors may help us to better understand the
factors that have shaped bin Laden and his form of Islam.
Mahdi: 'The Divinely Guided One.'
 uhammed Ahmed, the son of a poor shipbuilder, was born in
1844 in the Sudanese city of Dongola on the Nile River. While a
student, he was admired for his piety and religious asceticism.
Later, as a teacher, he preached an austere form of Islam and lived
in a cave on the island of Abba near Berber. He despised all
conquerors of the Sudan, including the Turks, not only because of
their humiliation of the Sudanese, but also because he believed they
were morally corrupt. The Sudanese would never be free from their
misery and oppression, he proclaimed, until they pursued lives of
piety and expelled the religiously lax Turkish plunderers and
invaders.
A
mahdi (divinely guide one) sent by Allah, he prophesied, would soon
come to rid them of the evil invaders. His message of hope and moral
regeneration struck a raw nerve among the downtrodden and
disappointed. Disciples prepared to sacrifice their lives,
Like bin Laden, the Mahdi dreamed of a world in which
all would submit to Allah.
| flocked by the thousands to his banner.
(Although many believed that he was indeed the Mahdi, he only
reluctantly made that claim at the insistence of his followers.)
The Sudan was
governed at this time from Egypt, which was itself part of the vast
Ottoman Empire. Disintegrating, venal, and no longer capable of
ruling its vast territories, the empire was well on its way to
extinction. Earlier in the century, Prince Metternich, the great
Austrian diplomat during the Napoleonic Wars, famously described the
empire as "the sick man of Europe." The European powers competed to
take advantage of this fact.
The north
central areas of the Sudan (Nubia, Sennar, and Kordofan) were
conquered between 1820 and 1822 by the armies of Muhammed Ali, the
Ottoman viceroy in Egypt. By 1840, all of the Sudan had fallen under
Egyptian control. Britain was drawn into the region in 1875, when
the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli bought the Suez
Canal Company. British policy toward Egypt and the Sudan was guided
for the next several decades by the need to protect its interest in
the Suez Canal and keep the Nile free from foreign competition.
Britain was
further drawn into Egyptian affairs after the khedive Ismail's
mismanagement bankrupted the government in 1878. After he was
deposed, Egypt was compelled to accept an Anglo-French debt
commission to manage its affairs; it had effectively fallen under
foreign control. Growing popular resentment over foreign influence
provoked, in turn, an army revolt. The British sent a fleet and an
expeditionary force that quelled the revolt and established in Cairo
a government acceptable to their interests.
Call for a
Jihad
 truggling with their own internal problems, Egyptian
authorities at first dismissed the Mahdi as harmless. After his
forces massacred an Egyptian army of fourteen hundred in 1881, they
could no longer ignore him. Thereafter, the Egyptian government
treated the Mahdi and his movement as a dangerous threat to its
control in the Sudan and took more vigorous steps to extinguish his
revolt. The Mahdi responded by declaring a jihad against the Turks
and other infidels living in the Sudan. A major struggle for power
and control, lasting for nearly two decades, had begun.
The Egyptian
government sent several more military expeditions to hunt down the
Mahdi and his rabble of believers. Although their armies won some
engagements
against the Mahdist
forces, it did not seem to matter since they would disappear like
ghosts into the desert, to regroup and reappear where least
expected.
Then,
in 1883, the khedive put Col. William Hicks, a former British
officer from India, in command of an Egyptian army of eight
thousand. Incompetently led and probably betrayed by their Arab
guides, they were eventually annihilated. This catastrophe
electrified the whole Sudan. The belief that the Mahdi was the
"infallible prophet" swept the Sudanese tribes. Who but one under
the guidance of Allah, it was believed, could win such astonishing
victories against the invaders? The following year, another
British-led Egyptian army also met disaster.
Like bin Laden,
the Mahdi dreamed of a world in which all would submit to Allah. He
proclaimed that after taking the Sudan, he would conquer Egypt, then
Mecca (which he promised to restore to its former glory), then
Jerusalem. Eventually the whole world would fall under the scimitar
of Islam. All infidels who fell into his hands were given the choice
of submitting to Islam or being killed. His enforcement of Qur'anic
law over those whom he ruled was harsh: stealing was punished by the
loss of a hand or a foot. Strict Talibanlike prohibitions were
imposed against drinking wine, smoking, clapping hands, slanderous
language, keeping company with strange women, weeping for the dead,
dancing, reading unacceptable books, or wearing ostentatious
clothing.
Gen. George Gordon
 n the wake of disasters in the Sudan, the British became
increasingly alarmed and clamored for the government to do
something. Succumbing to public pressure, Prime Minister William
Gladstone, an ardent anti-imperialist, reluctantly chose, in the
words of historian Keith Fielding, a "peculiar instrument" to deal
with the crisis--the famed Gen. George "Chinese" Gordon. A
fascinating and enigmatic personality, this
soldier-explorer-adventurer was admired throughout England. Gordon
had fought in the Crimean War and earned his nickname by putting
down the Taiping Rebellion. As governor-general of the Sudan in
1877--80, he successfully suppressed the slave trade. The public was
confident that he was the right man for the job. Yet, he had many
detractors in the military and government who considered this
devoutly Christian officer peculiar and unreliable. Headstrong,
stubborn, principled to a fault, Gordon was revered, by many in the
Sudan, precisely because of what many English saw as his
eccentricities. Even the Mahdi believed him to be an incorruptible
man of God.
In
the eyes of the British, the Mahdi constituted a remote threat. As a
result, they never united behind a coherent policy for dealing with
him. Competing interests and fickle public opinion, hence, buffeted
the government about. Unlike President Bush, who demonized bin Laden
and his followers as "the evil ones," Gladstone strongly believed
that the followers of the Mahdi were "justly struggling to be free."
Consequently, he was unwilling to take the decisive steps necessary
to stop the Mahdi.
Instead,
Gladstone sent Gordon to the Sudan with vague instructions to
evacuate the area without loss of life or the use of military force.
As Gordon was soon to discover, his orders were not rooted in a
realistic assessment of the situation. Even after Gordon was cut off
from the outside world in Khartoum, the capitol of the Sudan, the
British government delayed in ordering a relief column that might
have saved his life and thousands of others. Although the government
later repudiated Gordon, falsely presuming that he intended "to
smash the Mahdists" instead of evacuating the Sudan as he was
instructed, they did not, when they had the chance, recall him.
Whether Gordon fully understood the situation is not clear, but the
government had set him up as a scapegoat for its failed policy.
"Never more than in this episode," observes Fielding, "were the
detriments of parliamentary government so cruelly exposed."
Gladstone's dithering virtually assured that Gordon's mission would
end in tragedy.
Gordon arrived
in Khartoum in February 1884, to a tumultuous hero's welcome. The
Sudanese capitol, though, by this time was virtually surrounded by
the
Mahdi's vast army.
Realizing the hopelessness of the situation, Gordon first tried to
appease the Mahdi by offering to recognize him as the ruler of
Kordofan, a province west of the Nile, and allowing him to resume
the slave trade. This offer of peace was promptly rejected. Since
his mission was divine, the Mahdi replied, compromise could not be
part of his calculations. He would not be satisfied until all had
submitted to him, either through conquest or conversion to Islam.
The British
press watched in fascinated suspense as a dramatic encounter between
an obstinate general, armed only with his unquestioning belief in
God's ultimate justice, and his equally religiously fervent
adversary unfolded. Hemmed in on all sides by the enemy, Gordon
found that he had no choice, much to the consternation of Gladstone,
other than to remain in Khartoum. The British public, in the
meantime, deluded by a hopelessly naive faith in the power of
Gordon's personality to subdue the vast hordes of Mahdists, was
convinced that if anyone could pull off a miracle in such straits,
it would be the legendary Gordon. Gladstone insisted to the very end
that Gordon was in no danger and accused him of disobeying his
instructions by remaining in the Sudan. The weak and divided
government of Gladstone, frightened by the whims of vacillating
public opinion, had abandoned a brave soldier.
After the
317-day siege by the Mahdi, the inhabitants of Khartoum were nearly
starved into submission. The British government, still deluding
itself with the comforting notion that Gordon was in no imminent
danger, tardily ordered troops to
Unlike President Bush, who demonized bin Laden and his
followers as "the evil ones," Gladstone strongly believed that
the followers of the Mahdi were "justly struggling to be
free."
| Egypt, who progressed slowly toward the
Nile. On January 26, 1885, after a battle lasting only a few hours,
the Mahdists breeched the city and poured through the streets,
massacring nearly forty thousand, including Gordon. The British
relief force arrived two days later. After seeing that Khartoum had
fallen, it retreated promptly to Egyptian territory. The defeat of
Gordon and the sight of a retreating British army brought many new
converts to the Mahdi. The British public, on the other hand, was
stunned. Gladstone was publicly booed, and Queen Victoria bitterly
described Gordon's death as a "stain left upon England."
The Mahdi would
not long enjoy the fruits of his stunning victory over one of
Britain's most famous generals. Five months later, at the pinnacle
of his power and influence, he died. While some suspect he was
poisoned and others speculate that this middle-aged man was simply
worn out by the physical strain of attending to his growing harem,
most historians think he died of typhus.
Although the
Mahdi was dead, Mahdism as a political force was far from spent. His
successor, 'Abdullahi, established the Mahdiya (Mahdist regime). The
region sank into a condition of pestilential horror and disorder.
The slave trade was resumed. The weak, decentralized tribalistic
government of the Mahdiya could be maintained only by constant
warfare. The British ignored the Mahdist regime as long as they were
able to keep other European powers from gaining control over the
Nile headwaters. Once they began building a large irrigation dam at
Aswan, however, the British decided that the Sudan needed to be
brought under their direct supervision. To protect its interest in
the Nile headwaters against French, Italian, and Belgium claims,
Britain began a military campaign to reconquer the Sudan, which
ended when Gen. (later Lord) Herbert Kitchener defeated the Mahdists
at the Battle of Omdurman in 1899.
Thousands of
Mahdists fell like wheat before a new weapon of war, the Maxim gun,
against which their spears, shields, and religious convictions were
of no avail. More than ten thousand Mahdists perished, while only
forty-eight British soldiers lost their lives (and most of those due
to a foolish cavalry charge). The Mahdists were on the wrong side of
what is today called "asymmetrical warfare." Lusting to avenge
Gordon's death, the British soldiers massacred the surviving Mahdist
warriors and desecrated the Mahdi's tomb by dismembering his corpse.
Kitchener even considered the idea of making a drinking cup out of
the Mahdi's skull.
The End of Mahdi and Rise of
Mahdism
 his defeat ended Mahdism as a military force but not as a
spiritual and political reaction to Turkish and Egyptian rule.
Having united the Sudan under Islam, the Mahdi became a central
figure in Sudanese history. Well into the twentieth century, he
remained a powerful symbol of nationalistic resistance to foreign
oppression. His grandson was a prime minister of Sudan as recently
as 1989.
Despite
the hatred that the Mahdi inspired within the British army, some
Western observers have hailed him as a great historical figure.
Winston Churchill, who was with Kitchener at Omdurman, wrote that
the Mahdi would be remembered as one of "the heroes of his race."
The military successes of the Mahdi against overwhelming odds, the
fanatical devotion of his supporters, and the continuing appeal of
his message after his death can be attributed to the collective
pride he touched among the Sudanese. Their political discontent
and frustration found
its expression in religious fervor. As historian Anthony Nutting
observes, "A boat-builder's son from the Nile had shown the world
how a group of naked tribesmen, armed physically, at first, with
sticks and stones but inwardly always with faith and unity, could be
united and obtain superiority to a point where the greatest power on
earth was held to ransom."
Both bin
Ladenism and Mahdism sprang from anticolonial and antiforeign
sentiments against the perceived corrupting influences of Western
culture. Both are expressions of resentment toward the "outsiders"
or "foreigners" who draw believers away from the true faith. The
Mahdi, of course, was a creature of his times and lacked the ability
to project his power beyond the borders of the Sudan. Yet, compared
to bin Laden, he was more successful, dying an apparent natural
death after winning at least temporary independence for his people.
(Bin Laden and his followers have not been so fortunate, being
either wiped out in war or driven into hiding.) Many continued to
revere the Mahdi after his death. Even some of his former enemies
respected him and his cause. An impressive tomb was built in his
memory in Khartoum. It will be otherwise for bin Laden. His name
will always be equated in the West with evil. Even within the
Islamic world, few will honor the memory of one who came to such a
humiliating and catastrophic end.
One indisputable
lesson to be drawn by comparing the results of Britain's delayed and
weak response to the Mahdi with America's use of overwhelming
firepower to crush the Taliban and the al Qaeda is that decisive
action against an implacable enemy is more humane in the long run
than misguided attempts at compromise. The war in Afghanistan was
terrifying but mercifully short. In its aftermath, countless future
terrorist attacks have been deterred and many lives spared. In
contrast, the triumph of the Mahdi brought in its wake suffering and
death for many thousands. Eventually, Britain had to finish a job
that it had initially bungled.
Islam is not
just a system of faith but a way of life in which civil life and
religious ritual are closely intermingled. The separation of the
secular and religious realms, a central principle in Christianity,
is unknown in the Islamic religion. Hence, religious differences
tend to become political conflict, and political conflict turns into
religious crusades. The lack of a civil culture beyond a community
of proliferating rituals and prohibitions, explains why Islamic
politics are so heavily imbued with ecclesiastical overtones. All
social and political relations are regulated by the words of the
Qur'an and myriad glossators. "It is certain," explains Gatetano
Mosca in his classic book, The Ruling Class (1939), "that almost
every great revolution in the Mohammedan world, the birth of almost
great state, is accompanied and justified by a new religious schism.
So it was in the Middle Ages ... and that was also the case in the
nineteenth century with the insurrection of Wahabis and the revolt
led by the Mahdi of Omdurman."
Like the Mahdi,
bin Laden stoked up among the Muslim peoples a militant religious
fanaticism while simultaneously addressing their deeply felt sense
of grievance against foreigners and infidels. Such violent passions,
once unleashed, cannot be easily quelled. Mahdism did not die with
the passing of the Mahdi. Likewise, bin Laden's anti-Western
doctrines may outlive his now-battered reputation as a crusader for
Islam.
W. Wesley McDonald is a professor of history at Elizabethtown
College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
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