Sudanese Writer Haidar Ibrahim Ali Wins Al Owais Cultural Award
06 October, 2019
Dubai, UAE (Sudanow) - Sudanese writer Dr. Haidar Ibrahim Ali has won the Sultan Al Owais cultural award for 2019.
Ali is the founder and director of the Cairo-based “Sudanese Studies Center” that oversees publications and holds symposia about Sudan with clear emphasis on human rights and the search for good governance in the Sudan.
Ali had obtained a PhD degree in social science from the University of Frankfort in 1978.
He is seen as one of the most outstanding figures of democratic thought in the Sudan. He is a university professor, writer and a scholar of sociology. He had devoted much of his writing to the principles of religious sociology.
In 2005 and following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government of Sudan and the Southern rebels, Ali moved the Center to Khartoum. Later on he returned the Center to Cairo, complaining from security restrictions which he said used to bully him and his staff and finally shut the Center altogether. Some of his books were banned in Sudan during the Bashir regime.
Ali is a staunch critic of groups that adopt religion as a political lever, in what is known as “political Islam”, or “the Islamists.”
Based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Foundation, earmarks an annual $600, 000 - prize for distinguished research in the various domains of knowledge and for influential persons. Of this sum, a prize of $ 120, 000 was allocated for the cultural domain this year.
In a statement, the Foundation said “the arbitration committee has offered the cultural prize for Sudanese Thinker Haidar Ibrahim Ali because he has, through tens of writings, presented an objective social vision about the concept of political Islam, in which he probed the phenomenon via a comprehensive understanding”.
Some of his most outstanding books are: The Times of Wind, Anxiety and Freedom (An Autobiography), The Crisis of Political Islam (Study Case of The National Islamic Front (NIF) in Sudan), The Downfall of the NIF Civilizational Project and Afterthoughts of the Sudanese Islamists: Won the Power and Lost the Religion.
Dr. Ali has also written and published tens of articles.
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