As a student activist in Sudan under Brotherhood rule, I learned what it meant to hold views the regime considered unforgivable. Calling for democracy, liberalism, and secularism carried the constant threat of imprisonment, torture, or death. So, when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated the Sudanese Islamic Movement (SIM) and its armed wing, the al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade, as terrorist organizations last week, I recognized what the designation finally acknowledges. But the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood is not a product of the conflict that erupted in April 2023. It is the architect of the political order that made that conflict inevitable. Understanding how the Brotherhood evolved from an ideological movement into a military force; and why the United States finally acted; requires tracing a lineage that stretches back over seven decades.

From Campus Politics to State Capture

The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1954, modeled on its Egyptian parent organization but shaped by distinctly Sudanese conditions. For its first three decades, the movement operated primarily within universities and professional unions, building a cadre of ideologically committed members who would later occupy key positions in government, the military, and the judiciary. Its transformation from a social movement into a political force was driven almost entirely by one man: Hassan al-Turabi.

Turabi, a Sorbonne-educated legal scholar, understood that the Brotherhood could not seize power through elections alone in a country as ethnically and religiously diverse as Sudan. His strategy was institutional infiltration. By the 1980s, Brotherhood members had penetrated the officer corps of the Sudanese Armed Forces, the banking sector through Islamic finance institutions, and the intelligence services. When General Omar al-Bashir launched his coup on June 30, 1989, it was Turabi’s National Islamic Front (NIF), the Brotherhood’s political vehicle, that provided the ideological blueprint and the civilian governance apparatus. The coup was not a military takeover that the........

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