Munichaean Delirium: Decolonizing the Judiciary and Islamic Renewal in the Sudan, 1898-1985 (Book Review‪)‬

Munichaean Delirium: Decolonizing the Judiciary and Islamic Renewal in the Sudan, 1898-1985. By ABDULLAHI ALI IBRAHIM. Islam in Africa, 7. Leiden: BRILL, 2008. Pp. xx + 428. $184. Legal dualism lies at the heart of African legal systems. In this book the setting is North Sudan. Like other former colonialized countries, the country is tasked with treating the traumatic legacy of colonialization and decolonialization. The author is a social anthropologist/historian/former activist journalist with deep personal political ties to Sudan and personal experience with the Shari'a legal system. Unusual for an academic but most welcome from the perspective of critical acclaim, he consciously weaves his own political, philosophical, and religious transformations into the analysis of what the Islamic legal revolution was all about in the North and its responsibility for the civil war with the non-Muslim South, which is comprised of a plurality of traditional African religions.