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The eyes of the Sudanese are directed towards the city of Khartoum Bahri, which is waiting to say goodbye to the religious and political leader, Mr. Muhammad Othman Al-Mirghani, one of the most prominent faces in Sudan’s modern history.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, directed that his body be transported to Sudan on a private plane, after he passed away on Friday evening in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, at the age of 90.
His family decided to hold a funeral ceremony to receive officials, diplomatic missions and the Sudanese community, on Sunday evening, in the Heliopolis area in Cairo, where the funeral is expected to witness a wide official and popular attendance in appreciation of his great status and his close historical relationship with Egypt, which embraced him young, old and old.
After that, his body will return to his country, to be buried in the family cemetery in Hilat Hamad in the city of Khartoum Bahri, after prayers are offered over him in his father’s mosque, Mr. Ali.
Religious and political legacy
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Muhammad Othman Ali Al-Mirghani was born in 1936 in the Hillat Hamad area in the city of Khartoum Bahri, north of the Sudanese capital.
His father chose the name “Muhammad Othman” for him after the name of his grandfather, Muhammad Othman al-Mirghani al-Khatm, the founder of the Khatmiyya Sufi order in the nineteenth century, whose lineage goes back to Imam Hussein bin Ali bin Abi Talib, the grandson of the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad.
Al-Mirghani inherited leadership from his father, Ali, whose name was associated with both the Khatami order and the federal movement, and he played an influential role in political life during the colonial and independence period.
Ali Al-Mirghani was the leader of the People's Democratic Party, and he led the camp calling for connection with Egypt and unity with it, in the face of the movements calling for complete independence.
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In 1967, the National Unionist Party merged with the People's Democratic Party, which was led by Al-Mirghani, to form together the Democratic Unionist Party. Ali Al-Mirghani left the leadership in the hands of Mr. Ismail Al-Azhari, who was the first Prime Minister of Sudan between 1954 and 1956, and was called "the flag-raiser of Sudan's independence."
After the death of Ali Al-Mirghani in 1968, the sheikhdom of the Khatmiyya order passed to Muhammad Othman, who has since become its authority and most prominent symbol for more than fifty years, during which he was the bridge that linked the religious house to the field of political action.
In 1982, Dehaliz officially entered politics when he assumed the leadership of the Democratic Unionist Party, succeeding Sharif Hussein al-Hindi after his death. Al-Mirghani became the third leader of the party and one of the most prominent influential figures in Sudanese political and religious life for decades.
His party played an important role during the democratic phase that followed what was known as the April 1985 uprising, which overthrew the 16-year rule of President Jaafar Numeiri.
The Democratic Unionist Party is known as the party of the Sudanese National Movement, and represents the middle class in Sudan. It had the highest voter votes in the last democratic era in Sudan, and it was also popular among students in Sudanese universities.
In the parliamentary elections of 1986, the Democratic Unionist Party came in second place after the Umma Party, and participated in the coalition government headed by Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi.
It should be noted here that Muhammad Othman is the younger brother of Ahmed Al-Mirghani, who assumed the presidency of the Sudanese Head of State Council in the 1980s, between 1986 and 1989, before his government was overthrown by the Islamic Front’s coup against the democratic government on June 30, 1989.
Al-Mirghani - Garang
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Al-Mirghani formed a coalition with the government of Sadiq Al-Mahdi, before his party withdrew from it when Al-Mahdi objected to the peace initiative agreement that Al-Mirghani signed with John Garang in 1988 in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
Garang led the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which fought a 22-year war against successive Sudanese governments, while Al-Mirghani raised the slogan "The unity of Sudan, land and people."
The goal of the peace initiative was to stop the civil war in South Sudan through a comprehensive political settlement, and to emphasize the unity of Sudan between the Christian-majority south and the Muslim-majority north. This was more than twenty years before South Sudan separated and declared an independent state in 2011.
The agreement resulted in a ceasefire between the North and the South at that time, the freezing of some of the laws of September 1983, and the cancellation of the military agreement between Sudan and other countries, which the agreement saw as affecting national sovereignty.
From opposition to reconciliation
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The coup of June 30, 1989, known as the “National Rescue Revolution” led by Omar al-Bashir, led to the abort of the peace initiative, which was also known as the Mirghani-Garang agreement. The “Rescue Revolution” authorities placed Al-Mirghani in Kober Prison in Khartoum, along with dozens of political and party leaders in Sudan.
A few months later, a decision was issued to transfer Al-Mirghani from Cooper Prison to his home, and place him under house arrest for a short period, before he was released in February 1990, for health reasons and regional pressures.
At that time, Al-Mirghani decided to leave Sudan to reside in Cairo and assume the presidency of the National Democratic Rally, which included a group of Sudanese opposition parties, and which had been seeking to overthrow the Bashir regime for many years.
Al-Mirghani continued his opposition political work for many years, before his relationship with the regime changed, especially after the peace agreement that his country’s government, headed by Al-Bashir, signed with Garang in January 2005 in the city of Naivasha, Kenya.
At that time, Al-Mirghani decided to turn his opposition into reconciliation through the Cairo Agreement in June 2005, which allowed his party to participate in government in 2006.
Cairo...the first and last resort
After about seven years, Al-Mirghani decided to move to Cairo for health reasons. He was then in his seventies, and he chose to remain in the Egyptian capital for about ten years, during which he maintained his religious and party positions.
In 2022, he returned to his country after a long absence, but for a short period he received political and public attention, before he left again for Egypt after the outbreak of civil war in Sudan in April 2023.
He spent his last years in Cairo, where he met the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the sixties, and it was his first refuge in the nineties and beyond, which witnessed the closing of the curtain on his humanitarian career and his religious and political leadership that exceeded half a century, and left an indelible mark on Sudanese history.
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