Faith McDonnell reminds us that our jihadist enemies find the independence of South Sudan especially threatening to their worldview:
There is the outrage and resistance to South Sudan’s independence from the Arab world and Islamic leaders, including from clerics at that great friend of “Christian dialogue,” Al Azhar University. Sixty Islamic scholars signed a statement saying that it was not permissible for Sudan to divide because voting for secession from the north is religiously forbidden by Islamic law. (Too bad!) In one of the most overt expressions of intention to be totally ignored by the West, they go on to say that ‘the issue of South Sudan is not a question of civil war, but a global conspiracy to exclude Arabism and Islam, fuelled by many bodies, regional and international, in the forefront of Zionism and the global crusade, not against Sudan alone, as Southern Sudan is the gateway to Islam and Arabism in Africa.” Get that? South Sudan is the gateway to Islam and Arabism in Africa. This is what our South Sudanese brothers and sisters have been telling us for years. They have been standing in the gap against the spread of Islam to Africa. And Al Azhar’s top cleric, Ahmad al-Tayyeb, blames it all on the Jews, calling South Sudan’s referendum “a Zionist plot.”
Read the whole article, “Done With the Help of Our God,” at the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD).