Taha's vision The modern Sufi theology of Mahmud Muhammad Taha, 1909-1985

The Sudanese Muslim reformer Mahmud Muhammad Taha was executed in 1985 for his opposition to the introduction of Islamic criminal law in his country. His martyrdom in opposing traditional shari‘a and his radical project of Islamic legal reform have been described or mentioned in many books on modern Islam. But the mystical theology underlying his legal reform has been largely overlooked. This book describes Taha’s Sufi-inspired modernist theology in its premodern and modern intellectual context. It argues that his unique reliance on premodern Sufi thought allowed him to go further than his contemporaries in bringing Islam into the modern age, especially with his theory of spiritual evolution and his views on democratic governance and the rights of women and non-Muslims. Taha’s modern understanding of premodern Sufism may be viewed both as a Muslim version of contemporary New Age spirituality and as a Sufi reply to the fundamentalist Salafi interpretations of Islam that have gained worldwide ascendancy in the past few decades.