Outspoken Sudanese Muslim cleric Hassan al-Turabi was on the British teacher's side in the teddy case, he tells Mary Fitzgeraldin Khartoum.
No need for directions, the man said. Everybody knows Dr Turabi's house. He was right. After a 15-minute drive along Khartoum's dusty streets the car pulls up to the gates of a spacious villa in one of the city's more affluent enclaves. The walls of the vast reception hall inside are hung with pieces of the kiswah - the black cloth embroidered with Koranic verses that is used to cover the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam's holiest place of worship. In a smaller adjoining room sits Hassan al-Turabi.
The man who developed the ideological underpinning for Sudan's disastrous experiment in Islamic government and made the country an international pariah by providing safe haven to dozens of militants, including Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, is now 75.
Age has not dented his ability to court controversy. In interviews with the Arab media last year, Turabi, considered Africa's foremost Islamist thinker, declared that Muslim women could lead prayers or marry outside their faith, that covering the hair is not obligatory, and that apostasy should not be considered a crime. Conservatives throughout the Muslim world were incensed, and Turabi, who has a PhD from the Sorbonne, found himself where he most likes to be - at the centre of attention.
"They dismiss my arguments, not by using the religious texts, but by calling me a Europeanised apostate, a kafir [ unbeliever]," he says gleefully.
The urbane septuagenarian revels in his notoriety. "Do they still call me le pape noir du terrorisme in Europe?" he asks at one point during a conversation that stretches well over two hours. It's hard not to sympathise with the writer who once described an interview with Turabi as more like a lesson in dictation. Sprightly and prone to wild gesticulation, he rushes through what amounts to a monologue of often unfinished sentences and rapid shifts in subject, all punctuated with an unnervingly high-pitched giggle that further exposes his protruding teeth.
Dressed in a pristine white djellaba (a loose-fitting robe) and turban, Turabi talks at length about what he sees as a global Islamic revival. "It's an awakening all over the world, from Indonesia to Morocco and even in the northern hemisphere. The Muslims were very quiet in places like England and Germany or America when I was younger but now they are asserting their identity like never before." Turabi claims to be worried about where this resurgence could lead. "Spiritual revival generates a lot of energy, and if you don't regulate that sort of energy, it can explode," he explains. "It makes me anxious. With some young people, a growing awareness of their Islamic identity can turn into this business of saying 'down with the infidels . . . '"
Another favourite subject is his belief that Islam is not just compatible with democracy but holds the same principles. "Democracy is a Western idea but the same values are in Islam. There is no church in Islam, no holy people to rule over the rest, and the government is based on consultation and consent," he says.
Turabi's critics - and there are many - seize on pronouncements like these as proof of his political opportunism. They dismiss his championing of democracy as just a shrewd way of positioning himself against what he calls the "military dictatorship" in Sudan.
After all, this is the man who acted as chief ideologue for the National Islamic Front (NIF), the party that came to power in a military coup in 1989 and went on to rule the country with an iron fist for the next decade. Prior to this, Turabi, who had earned his Islamist stripes with a Sudanese offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, helped draft the notorious September Laws that imposed an uncompromising version of sharia law across the country in 1983. The move helped trigger civil war between Sudan's Muslim north and non-Muslim south. Turabi now insists sharia law should only apply to Muslims.
SINCE FALLING OUT with Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, his former ally and protege, in 2000, Turabi has been jailed repeatedly by those he helped empower. In prison, he began to reflect and write about where Sudan's Islamic experiment went wrong.
Perhaps not surprisingly, while Turabi acknowledges the failure, he is less willing to concede his own role in it. His biggest regret, he says, is that he trusted the army and believed the coup would usher in his dream of a state run on Islamic principles.
"We were the first Sunni experiment in Islamic government. If you are travelling a road where no one has gone before, there is no one to tell you the pitfalls and dangers." Turabi claims his movement was hijacked and its ideals betrayed by army leaders such as Bashir. "The military became corrupt after they came to power. They forgot their agreements. Of course it is very tempting, you know, this power . . . ". Asked about the human-rights abuses that came to embody the NIF regime, Turabi again blames the army.
HE REMEMBERS OSAMA bin Laden as a "gentle, honest" man but sniffs at his lack of intellectual depth. "He is a Saudi and the Saudi education system is not one for broadening the mind. He is not an independent thinker. I used to talk to him within his limits. We would discuss issues such as the revival of Islam.
"He's not broad-minded enough to organise something on a worldwide basis. The people around him may have thought of making contacts across the world, but this idea of a network of organisations - al-Qaeda - that's absolutely foolish. But people have been inspired by him, people who have never met or spoken to him but were imbued by his imagery."
Turabi says he never heard from bin Laden again after he and his associates fled to Afghanistan following their expulsion from Sudan in 1996.
"They organised a small community over there and started communicating with the world through the media and the internet. And soon bin Laden became a world figure," he says. "Unfortunately he got a lot of assistance from the media, especially in the West. He would never have inspired all these people if his message had not been transmitted through the media."
He goes on to compare bin Laden with Che Guevara, saying that both men became larger than life versions of themselves through the media. "Che Guevera inspired many people but if you study him, you'll find he was not much of an operator actually," he says. "In the same way, if you got someone like bin Laden to sit and talk with many of these young Muslims who consider him a hero, they would see that he is a pious, genuine person but that's it. It might shatter some of their illusions."
TURABI SAYS HE was not surprised by 9/11 - "Sometimes people become so angry they don't know what to do, so they lash out violently" - but insists he does not support such acts. "I don't want Islamic energy to be lost on things like this." Today the father of Sudan's Islamic experiment leads one of the country's opposition parties. He denies reports linking him to an Islamist rebel group in Darfur but says he believes Darfuri grievances are legitimate and need to be addressed in a proper political process. Almost two weeks after we meet, news breaks of the British teacher jailed in Khartoum for allowing her class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. One Sudanese newspaper says Turabi should testify on the offence caused by the teacher's actions. He does not agree. "This is a very foolish case and it has been very damaging for the image of Muslims in general," he tells The Irish Times by telephone. "The word Muhammad is just an Arabic word, a name. If you go to any jail here you will find lots of men carrying the name who have done far more to insult the Prophet with their behaviour.
"The government is under huge pressure internationally so they were looking for any excuse to divert attention. That's why they exploited the case of this poor teacher. All this uproar has been for nothing."
Turabi talks terrorism and teddies
On opposition from conservative Muslims
They dismiss my arguments, not by using the religious texts, but by calling me a Europeanised apostate, a kafir
On the failure of Sudan's sharia law experiment
The military became corrupt after they came to power. They forgot their agreements
On Osama bin Laden
He's not broad-minded enough to organise something on a worldwide basis. This idea of a network of organisations - al-Qaeda - it's absolutely foolish
On 9/11
Sometimes people become so angry they don't know what to do, so they lash out violently
On the 'Muhammad' teddy bear scandal
This is a very foolish case and it has been very damaging for the image of Muslims in general