As you know, South Sudan just completed its Referendum for Independence. From January 9-16, voting took place in South Sudan and around the world. Thanks, I believe, to the prayers of the global Body of Christ and others, but especially the prayer of South Sudan’s Christians, the voting process went extremely well. None of the anticipated violence, reignition of war, voter fraud, or various other scenarios occurred in South Sudan. Tragically, there were some people killed in Abyei and an attack on a convoy of South Sudanese moving from north to south to vote left some dead and dozens of others wounded. But within South Sudan itself, the voting was peaceful and orderly. The official results will not be announced until next month, but even the northern government of Omar el Bashir appears to ready to accept the inevitable. The 60 percent threshold of registered voters that needed to actually vote was far surpassed, and the votes for separation seem to be well beyond the 51 percent needed for secession. In most areas, the percentage reached 98-100 percent. That should surprise no one!
South Sudanese are jubilant. They know that this is just the beginning. There is a six-month interim period for the details of separation to be worked out. Here is yet another opportunity for Khartoum to revert to its usual modus operandi. And there is the long, hard work of making the nation. Yet they are joyful knowing that for the first time, they are free. They are praising God. They have even chosen a national anthem that gives more glory and thanks to God than any other national anthem I have ever heard.
And what other reaction is there to South Sudan’s anticipated independence? Well, there are the advocates and activists who have been working and fighting and praying for South Sudan. They are also jubilant, but aware of the hard road ahead, and also concerned for Sudanese in other parts of Sudan. What will happen to Christians living in the north? What will Darfurians, Beja, Nubians, and people of Abyei, Blue Nile, and the Nuba Mountains do?
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.”
That reaction to South Sudan’s Referendum is not unexpected (consider the source), but what is more disheartening is the cynical reaction among some in the ranks of the anti-jihad movement. They are pessimistic and only offer discouragement. They express their very learned opinion on the subject, and on the naivete and lack of comprehension of all of those who have any hope that South Sudan will succeed and be a bulwark of freedom and democracy in Africa. Perhaps they do it just to show how very intelligent they are. But I would like to ask them, what exactly would they have South Sudan do? Since they, these learned ones, know the new state is doomed in one way or another by jihad, either by war from the north, or by the kind of stealth jihad that is afflicting the United States today because South Sudan as a democratic nation will not exclude Muslims, do they think that South Sudan should just give up? That would seem to be the logical conclusion of their way of thinking. If so, they don’t know the South Sudanese very well.
And, it would seem, that they have not included God in the equation at all. If God wants there to be a nation of South Sudan, there is going to be a nation of South Sudan.
At the risk of adding to Al Azhar’s Zionist paranoid delusions, I must say that this reminds me of the naysayers and critics who came against Nehemiah and those who worked with him to the rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. As they worked, they faced great opposition, both from those who wanted them to fail, and from folks who were just naturally pessimistic, but were used by Satan to try to discourage the Jewish rebuilders. They were mocked and ridiculed because the task before them seemed enormous and insurmountable for their small band of builders. But the Book of Nehemiah says, “The people worked with all their heart.” As they continued building, their enemies mocked and threatened all the more, and even a group of Jewish people not participating in the building project, “who lived near them,” added their discouragement. Nehemiah says that they “told us ten times over, “Wherever you turn, they will attack us.” I’ll bet he wanted to tell them to shut up! But instead he arranged for people with swords, spears, and bows to be stationed behind the lowest points of growing wall, and told them, “Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”
Again, when the wall was completely rebuilt, except for setting the doors in the gates, the enemies of the Jews, including Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab (I’ll bet there’s quite a story behind that!) “and the rest of our enemies” plotted to take out Nehemiah and asked him to meet them. “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down,” Nehemiah replied. Then the enemies threatened him with a campaign of disinformation (kind of like Al Jazeera does), but Nehemiah told them they were “making it up out of [their] heads.” And he asked God to strengthen his hands. All this intrigue took place during the 52 days that it took to complete the walls of Jerusalem. “So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth day of Elul, in fifty-two days.” And, says Nehemiah, “When all our enemies heard about this and all the surrounding nations saw it, our enemies lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.” May this be the case with South Sudan, as well.
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