Its roots and political repercussions
By Elmahboob Abdelsalam*
April 8, 2026
On March 8, 2026, the US State Department designated the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and noted its intention to list it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization effective March 16. The announcement named Sudan’s Islamist Movement and its jihadist Al-Baraa bin Malik Brigade as constituents of the Brotherhood and contended that they have been receiving assistance from Iran.
In Sudan, there is a wide and varied range of people who could be considered Islamist in the sense that they believe that Islam should guide political life, creating confusion and apprehension about the decision, but they include a complex array of factions and tendencies that, over time, have allied and split in different patterns. This paper seeks to lay out the complex landscape and history of Islamists in Sudan, with a view to informing analyses of its potential impacts.
* Elmahboob Abdelsalam is a Sudanese writer and political figure who studied philosophy and sociology. Over the course of three decades, he has published articles on politics and literature in the Sudanese and Arab media. He has authored several works, most notably “The Sudanese Islamist Movement: Circle of Light and Threads of Darkness on the First Decade of Islamist Rule in Sudan.”
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