ABSTRACT
The demise of the liberal element within the Sudanese political movement, caused partly by its intrinsic weakness, and partly by the alliance of the first generations of the intelligentsia with sectarianism, was bound to leave a vacuum in Sudanese political thought. Naturally the Sudan was influenced by these developments in neighbouring states, particularly Egypt, which remained the gate through which the Sudan received external influences. The Sudanese cannot identify easily with either Arabism or Africanism and the synthesis of Afro-Arabism which was worked out as a reflection of the ‘double identity’ of the Sudan has, as in the words of one scholar, cultivated a ‘multiple marginality’. The majority of the Sudanese intelligentsia, having just participated in a victorious popular uprising, were indeed more inclined to be influenced by the strong tides of socialism, nationalism and freedom than with Islamic ‘fundamentalism’, whose tide was rather ebbing during the 1960s.
