Hassan al-Turabi, an Islamist leader under house arrest, began a hunger strike this week with 66 of his followers.

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But much of the doctrinal fervour went out of the Islamist revolution when its main ideologue, Hassan al-Turabi, was kicked out of the government in 2000.

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Sudan's, if it really happened, never got past the planning stage, but the government arrested several prominent Islamist critics, including its own former chief ideologue, Hassan al-Turabi.

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