In my interview with Sky News Arabia, I explored the enduring influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan, framing it as a critical issue not only for Sudan’s internal stability but also for regional and international security. The Brotherhood’s deeply entrenched networks within Sudanese institutions have created a “parallel state” that continues to undermine democratic governance and fuel instability, with implications that extend far beyond Sudan’s borders.
A key focus of the discussion was the Brotherhood’s strategic infiltration of Sudan’s state apparatus since the early 1990s. By embedding their ideology into the military, security forces, education system, and religious institutions, they established a “deep state” capable of resisting political change. This network has not only stymied Sudan’s democratic transition but also created a breeding ground for ideological extremism, which poses a broader threat to regional security. Their control over mosques, universities, and media platforms has allowed them to weaponize religious discourse, portraying democracy as chaos and political compromise as betrayal, thereby perpetuating societal divisions and conflict.
The Brotherhood’s economic strategy was another critical point of analysis. Through the creation of Islamic banks and a parallel economic system, they established financial networks that served as tools for recruitment, loyalty, and influence. These networks have not only entrenched their power domestically but also connected Sudan to transnational Islamist movements, raising concerns about the flow of funds and resources to extremist groups across the region. This economic architecture has implications for international counterterrorism efforts, as it highlights the challenges of dismantling financial systems that operate outside traditional state controls.
The interview also addressed the challenges faced by Sudan’s transitional government after the fall of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Despite the revolution’s promise of democratic reform, the Brotherhood’s entrenched influence within the military and security sectors created significant obstacles. The systematic replacement of national military officers with Islamist loyalists and the restructuring of the security apparatus have left Sudan’s defense institutions compromised, undermining efforts to establish a professional and apolitical military. This has not only hindered Sudan’s path to stability but also raised concerns about the country’s role in regional security dynamics, particularly in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea corridor.
In essence, the discussion underscored how the Brotherhood’s decades-long strategy of ideological, economic, and institutional control has transformed Sudan into a case study of how extremist networks can undermine state sovereignty and democratic aspirations. The implications of this extend beyond Sudan, as the persistence of such networks poses a challenge to international efforts aimed at promoting stability, countering extremism, and fostering democratic governance in fragile states.
Translation of the article
The Brotherhood’s influence in Sudan and its influence on decisions in the country have raised questions about the deep reasons that prevented a real democratic transition and the motives of the “Brotherhood ideology” that has reproduced itself within state institutions and society under new masks.
Analysts and observers told Sky News Arabia that Sudan is still a prisoner of a complex intellectual and organizational network that the Brotherhood has planted in state and society institutions since the early 1990s, which did not leave the scene with the fall of the Bashir regime, but reproduced itself through civil, advocacy and cultural facades to keep the country in the orbit of conflict.
“Brotherhood masks”
According to a study published at Auburn University, the Brotherhood relied on building a complex organizational network that later enabled them to control the state by establishing civil and charitable organizations that were religious and humanitarian, but they were parallel arms of the state that worked to spread the Brotherhood’s ideology and consolidate its influence within the social and political structure.
The most prominent of these arms are the Islamic Dawa Society, the African Islamic Relief Agency, andthe Sudan Scholars Association, as well as youth and cultural organizations that have formed a soft façade to enable the group to penetrate society away from government control.
The study explained that in the educational and cultural field, the Brotherhood focused on penetrating universities and professional unions, controlling the student unions at the University of Khartoum for decades and turning them into platforms for recruiting cadres, and the group tightened its grip on the school curriculum, student unions, and administrative cadres, ensuring its continued dominance over the production of knowledge and cultural discourse in the country.
In the social and religious sphere, the Brotherhood used preaching and charitable associations as tools of influence and penetration, as these organizations played the role of an “alternative to the state” in providing services, especially in the rural areas and Darfur, and the group extended its control over mosques and religious pulpits, turning religious discourse into a political tool, according to the American study.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge concluded that the Islamists in Sudan relied not only on ideology or political mobilization, but on a comprehensive social and economic architecture that made religion, money, and education tools for reshaping society and the state, stressing that the failure of the democratic transition after the fall of Bashir is directly related to the continuation of these economic, cultural, and religious networks that the Brotherhood has established over decades.
Since the 1970s, the Brotherhood has exploited remittances from Sudanese workers abroad to establish a parallel economic system through “Islamic banks,” which granted tax breaks and special powers, served as platforms for social and political recruitment, and dominated student unions at major universities..
تغول على “مفاصل الدولة”
French academic and professor of international relations Frank Farnell told Sky News Arabia that the ouster of Omar al-Bashir in 2019 was widely seen as an opportunity for Sudan to open a new chapter of democratic governance, but hopes for a stable government were quickly constrained by a series of major challenges, most notably the Brotherhood’s continued and penetrating influence.
“The Brotherhood exercised its deepest and most complex dominance through its tight control over the institutions of education, culture, society, and religion, which formed a solid base of resistance to any real democratic transition,” Farnell explained.
For decades, the group has systematically worked to penetrate the fabric of Sudanese society, and through its control over the main social pillars, it has established what is known as the “deep state”, according to the French academic, who explained that schools and universities were incubators for intellectual recruitment, as the curricula were modified to serve political Islam, and the appointment of faculty members was subject to the criteria of political loyalty.
He stressed that the extensive presence of the Brotherhood’s networks constituted a structural obstacle for the transitional authorities after 2019, as every reform attempt was met with organized resistance from within state institutions and civil society, as the top management agencies included many officials loyal to or beneficiaries of the old regime, which produced a state of stalemate as the transitional government was forced to face clear remnants of the military and security structure of the former regime in addition to the invisible but highly influential Brotherhood “deep state” .
“Absence of Sudanese democracy”
From New York, American security and strategy expert Irina Zuckerman told Sky News Arabia that for decades, the Brotherhood has invested heavily in the fields of education, religious upbringing, and social services to build parallel power structures capable of viability and influence after any political change.
She pointed out that religious institutions remained in the hands of the Brotherhood’s supporters and another pillar of control, as preachers close to the Brotherhood dominated mosques, universities and media platforms, and used Friday sermons and media commentaries to portray democracy as chaos and political settlement as a betrayal of religion, pointing out at the same time that the group’s influence also extended to the political elite itself, as many leaders were formed in institutions that had previously been subject to the influence of the Brotherhood, and thus the Brotherhood’s influence enabled the absence of any consensus A real social about the meaning of democracy.
A parallel state
Sudanese writer and analyst Abdel Moneim Suleiman asserts that from the first day the Brotherhood overthrew the democratic system in Sudan in 1989, they began to build a parallel state of their own within the state that existed at the time, and a parallel economy in contrast to the economy that existed.
This domination included the acquisition of education, culture, religious and social platforms, the formulation of public awareness, and the subversion of the artistic and emotional taste of Sudanese society through the policy of what was known as the Islamization of society,” Suleiman explained.
And when they took full control, they demolished the old state and established their own state in its place, creating a new class of loyal businessmen after impoverishing the historical national capitalism, and establishing loyal companies, associations, and banking and tax facilities,” the Sudanese writer emphasizes.
Suleiman pointed out that when the 2018 revolution broke out, which ended in the establishment of a transitional civilian government headed by Abdalla Hamdok, that government found a deep 30-year-old state that controlled all parts of the country, which worked to impede the democratic transition.
The disaster, in Suleiman’s opinion, was the dismissal of all national military officers, the replacement of them by Islamist officers, the change of the army’s military curriculum and doctrine, the establishment of a security and intelligence apparatus affiliated with them after the abolition of the old apparatus, and the establishment of a police loyal to them, and the result was a parallel state affiliated with them.
