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Introduction -- Chapter 1: Shari'a, Islam and Islamism in Sudanese History -- Chapter 2: The Ascendance of Islamism, 1983-89 -- Chapter 3: 'Be Careful what you ask for' -- Chapter 4: Shari'a Courts and Judges in Contemporary Practice -- Chapter 5: Demographic Transformation -- Chapter 6: Social Transformation -- Chapter 7: Comparative cases of Iran, Afghanistan and Nigeria -- Chapter 8: Post-Islamism, Future of Shari'a and the Sudanese State.

The current Islamist government, ushered in by a military coup in 1989, declared that the Sudan must be governed by Islamic law orshari'ain accordance with what it called the Civilization Project. As expected, the personal status for Muslims laws,Ahwal Shakhsiyya, continued to be governed by shari'a as it has always been. However, the Sudanese society experienced unprecedented changes that are considered un-Islamic, and may be even punishable by law. In this paper two of those changes happened in the institution of marriage. This paper discusses two types of marriage, 'Urfi and Misyar that are not part of the law, and traditionally unacceptable, and by law deemed by some to be illegal. Some scholars are seeking to normalize and may be legalize both types.

Anténor Firmin published De I'Égalité des Races Humaines in 1885 in Paris as a response both to Arthur de Gobineau's racist tome L'lnégalité des Races (1853‐55) and to the racialist anthropology of the nineteenth century. This pioneering work of anthropology has been translated for the first time into English by Assclin Charles as The Equality of the Human Races (Firmin [1885]2000). In 662 pages of the original text, Firmin systematically critiqued the anthropometry and craniometry that dominated the anthropology of his day, while he envisioned a broad, synthetic discipline that would follow once this narrow approach to the study of man was abandoned. He challenged virtually every extant racial myth and laid a basis for the understanding of human variation as adaptation to climate and environment. Contrary to the polygenist doctrines of the infertility of interracial matings, Firmin extolled the value of racial mixture, especially in the vigorous New World hybrid populations. He developed a critical view of racial classifications and of race that foreshadowed much later social constructions of race. In the book he also articulated early Pan‐Africanist ideas as well as an analytical framework for what would become postcolonial studies.The Equality of the Human Races is a text that lies historically at the foundations of the birth of the discipline of anthropology, yet it is unknown to the field. It is a pioneering work in critical anthropology that awaits recognition 115 years after it was first published. [Anténor Firmin, history of racism, antiracism, historical texts, Haitian anthropologist, critical anthropology, nineteenth‐century pioneer]