Complementing, Not Confronting A Reading of Mr. Adel Al-Amin's Article "Toward a Sudanese Model for

02:40 PM August, 31 2026

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Complementing, Not Confronting
A Reading of Mr. Adel Al-Amin's Article "Toward a Sudanese Model for Rebuilding the State on the Basis of the Three-Dimensional Mind"
In Light of the Charter of Salvation and State-Building (Mithaq)

Dr. Ali Abdullahi Elkhalifa Taha

Introduction: The Value of the Thesis and Its Place in the Mithaq Project

In this paper, Mr. Adel Al-Amin advances a bold diagnosis of the crisis in the political and intellectual model that has governed Sudan's relationship with its Arab surroundings since 1945, drawing on a telling poetic metaphor from Abdullah Al-Bardouni and a central analytical concept: the "Counterfeit Center" (al-markaz al-muzayyaf). At its core, this diagnosis does not clash with the Charter of Salvation and State-Building (Mithaq) but rather meets it from another angle: both begin from the same question, why does the Sudanese state remain paralyzed despite possessing the elements needed for its rise, and both conclude that the affliction is structural rather than local, tied to the monopolization of representation and legitimacy rather than to a mere shortage of resources or poor management alone.
This reading seeks to place the thesis of the "Three-Dimensional Mind" in direct dialogue with the Mithaq's six mechanisms, identifying the points of convergence on which it can be built, and the gaps the Mithaq can fill, following the method of "complementing, not confronting," that is, building upon the author's effort rather than opposing it.

I. Points of Convergence

1. The Diagnosis of the Four Elites and Ascending Functional Legitimacy
Mr. Adel offers a precise taxonomy of four parasitic elites reproduced by the Counterfeit Center: the dissolute ruler, the counterfeit cleric, the narcissistic intellectual, and the ideologized doctor. This taxonomy intersects precisely with the founding premise of the Mithaq's mechanism of Ascending Functional Legitimacy (al-shar'iyya al-wazifiyya al-sa'ida), which rejects legitimacy imposed from above or from abroad and replaces it with legitimacy built upward from functional and societal grassroots. What Adel diagnoses in the language of cultural and literary critique, the Mithaq offers a procedural alternative to: an escalation mechanism that structurally prevents the very formation of such intermediary elites, because it removes the source of legitimacy from the grasp of whoever monopolizes religious, media, or imported political discourse.
2. The Five Regions and the Fourth Pillar
The call to "revive the five regions" and form a "Union of Sudanese Regions" is, in principle, a direct echo of the Mithaq's Fourth Pillar (al-rakiza al-rabi'a) mechanism, based on weighted regional representation across six functional regions. The difference between the two proposals is one of method, not of goal: Adel Al-Amin's thesis restores the historical-geographical boundaries that predate 1978, while the Fourth Pillar builds a functional-mathematical division that balances representation using quantitative criteria (population, resources, relative development) rather than inherited borders alone. This is not a contradiction but a complementarity: the historical foundation Adel proposes can serve as a starting point refined by the mathematical formula the Mithaq has developed — restoring the historical legitimacy of the regions while avoiding the rigidity of inherited borders.
3. The Proposed Constitutional Article and the Institutional Firewall
The text of the constitutional article proposed in the paper, which prohibits any party, group, or religious institution from receiving direction or funding from an external center, is a literal application of the logic of the Institutional Firewall (al-jidar al-mu'assasi) in the Mithaq, which mandates a strict separation between the political layer and the civil-executive layer and protects it from infiltration. What the Mithaq adds here is the permanent institutional character of this separation: it is not an isolated constitutional clause but an executive firewall equipped with ongoing oversight and accountability mechanisms, preventing a repeat of what the paper describes as "importing organization" instead of "building the state."
4. "Intellectual Disengagement" and the Transitional Bridge Initiative
The call to sign a "Charter of Intellectual Disengagement" from the Counterfeit Center shares with the Mithaq's Transitional Bridge Initiative (mubadarat al-jisr al-intiqali) not just its subject but its very instrument: both hold that the transitional moment requires a comprehensive founding document that declares a break with a prior pattern and opens a new horizon. "Intellectual Disengagement" can be seen as a preparatory, cultural chapter preceding the political Transitional Bridge, one that prepares the intellectual and psychological ground for accepting the redistribution of power and representation that the Bridge proposes.

II. Gaps and Points of Complementarity

1. The Problem of "The Unseen = Socialism" in the Constitutional Structure
This is the most methodologically significant gap. Mr. Adel proposes a tripartite balance in the constitution's preamble: instinct in federalism, science in civility, and the unseen (al-ghayb) in socialism. Yet inserting the category of "the unseen" as a metaphysical pillar parallel to two procedural constitutional pillars (federalism and civility) creates tension with the paper's own general logic, which sharply criticizes the political instrumentalization of Al-Azhar and official religious institutions, and calls for "the sovereignty of the people as both source and practice." How, then, can religious instrumentalization be excluded in one place, while the unseen is invoked as a constitutional pillar elsewhere in the very same document؟
The Mithaq's approach here proposes a structural solution rather than a rejection of the meaning the author intends: if what is meant by "the unseen" is the solidaristic and ethical dimension that cannot be reduced to calculations of individual interest, this very meaning is already present in the secular philosophical references the Mithaq employs in its political documents, the Ubuntu conception of shared being, Ostrom's concept of the commons and their collective management, and Levinas's concept of responsibility toward the Other. These references fulfill the same solidaristic function the author is seeking, without opening the door to a later religious instrumentalization of the state, and they preserve the internal consistency of the author's own thesis rejecting the monopolization of religious discourse.
2. The Absence of a Mechanism for Holding Elites Accountable After Disengagement
The paper diagnoses the four elites with precision but does not propose a mechanism for holding them accountable or reintegrating them after the declaration of intellectual independence. This gap is filled by the Mithaq's Three-Tiered Transitional Justice System (nizam al-'adala al-intiqaliyya al-thulathi al-mustawayat): a local reconciliation tier for those who were mere executive instruments within this pattern without being decision-makers; a Truth and Reparations Commission to document the mechanism of intellectual and institutional dependency the paper describes; and a Major Crimes Chamber with no amnesty for anyone who used their religious or political position to eliminate opponents, and here specifically the paper intersects with the execution of Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, which it itself cites as an example.
3. The Absence of the Structural Economic Dimension
The paper focuses on the political-intellectual dimension of dependency (the Arab League, Al-Azhar, pan-Arabism, the Muslim Brotherhood) but passes quickly over the economic dimension when it describes the transformation of the slogan "the Arab world's breadbasket" into "the Arab world's debt basket." This point deserves the fuller elaboration offered by the Mithaq's Gateway Economy framework (iqtisad al-bawwabat), which analyzes how Sudan's agricultural and mineral resources were turned into rentier transit points managed for the benefit of cross-border regional networks, not for the benefit of the Sudanese state, nor even necessarily for the Counterfeit Center itself, but for the benefit of a broader network of interests involving multiple regional and international actors.
Methodological note: The complementarity proposed here does not touch the core of Mr. Adel Al-Amin's thesis in its critique of Egyptian centrality and its four instruments; rather, it proposes reformulating the third dimension of the "Three-Dimensional Mind" in a way that achieves the paper's own internal consistency, and adds two procedural mechanisms (transitional accountability and structural economic analysis) that were absent from the original text.

III. Toward an Integrated Formulation

It can be said that Mr. Adel Al-Amin's paper provides the strong historical-cultural foundation that the project of a Union of Regions needs, in a literary-analytical language that reaches audiences the Mithaq's legal-constitutional formulation does not reach. In turn, the Mithaq provides the procedural tools (ascending legitimacy, the Fourth Pillar, the institutional firewall, transitional justice, the gateway economy) that transform cultural diagnosis into an applicable structure of governance. Merging the two theses diminishes the originality of neither; rather, it grants the Sudanese project of state-rebuilding both historical depth and an executive instrument at once.
Conclusion
What unites the "dismantling of the Counterfeit Center" and the "Charter of Salvation and State-Building" runs deeper than a similarity of terminology: both reject the notion that legitimacy is granted from a single center, whether geographic or ideological, and both hold that Sudan's true independence depends on its capacity to produce its own model from within. The disagreement over the place of "the unseen" in the constitutional structure is not a disagreement over the shared destiny, but over the most suitable instrument for protecting it from the very instrumentalization the author himself warned against in his critique of both Al-Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood alike.
Complementing, Not Confronting, In Light of the Charter of Salvation and State-Building

Arabic Forum