How is faith relevant to conflict? Guest: Zaza Johnson Elsheikh

Hello and welcome to the first episode of WeCanFindAWay in 2025.

I am very happy to start the seventh season of this podcast with someone that has taught me here in the UK that mediation can be practiced even in settings that have an aspect of faith in it. She is someone whose opinion I sometimes seek also because she walks towards conflict not away from it. This is an advice I watched her giving and I find myself doing just that but could not really put it as eloquently.

So I am hosting Dr. Zaza Johnson Elsheikh who is an interfaith mediator as well as a faith leader originally from Sudan. She and I talked about inter faith mediation; about the conflict in Sudan and what it means to have independent mediators/negotiators in so called peace talks; the humanitarian crisis, sexual violence surrounding this conflict as well as the shame and humiliation involved. Lastly, Zaza explained how Sudanese people see the connection between peace and justice, a theme relevant for transitional societies. I will present her resume at the end of this episode. Let me now move to our interview that took place on 2nd January 2025.

IE: Thanks for agreeing to talk to me. Can you please tell me what made you start interfaith mediation, and how do you think this experience can be used in the current crisis in Sudan?

ZJE: Thank you, Idil. Thank you for having me. I started interfaith mediation because I was accredited as a mediator, and I had an experience in 2010 where one of the parties called me before the mediation and said, you know, I want to warn you that the other part is Muslim, and I don't know how much experience you have of dealing with Muslim people, but they can be jolly slippery. So I paused for a moment, me knowing that I'm Muslim, him clearly not hearing that I'm Muslim (because I don't sound Muslim), There's not a particular sound.

IE: What does that mean?

ZJE: Yeah. I said to him after a moment, don't worry, I've got plenty of experience in dealing with Muslim people, because clearly, I do. So then, on the next morning, when I met him at the mediation, he was very, very shocked to see me and, actually said that I wasn't the appropriate mediator. I've, fortunately been living in the UK for so long now, that I know how to respond to things. So I said really? Why? What's the problem? Even though I knew…

IE: Trying to extract… But where you were appointed, I guess, right?

ZJE: Yeah, so I was appointed as a mediator, but it was through the National Mediation Helpline, so the parties didn't have any choice in who the mediator was. They could only choose whether to mediate or not. He then told me that the reason he didn't want me to proceed as the mediator was because I'm not legally qualified. So he'd clearly not read my profile. He’d just grasped the fact that I was a medical doctor. He thought he’d hang on to that. So I said: “Is that the only reason?” And he said: “Absolutely, we know you're the Senior Partner of Commercial and Medical Dispute Solutions. We know that you're, you know, very well experienced and qualified, but no, we think this case is rather legally intricate, and so we would prefer to have somebody who's got a legal background”. So I said: “well, as luck would have it, I am a solicitor, so let's proceed”, and so that case did settle. I thought that it was such a shame that my training at that time, (I was trained by CEDR in 2006), and the sort of custom of mediation was also that you don't talk about religion, and you don't talk about politics in a mediation. You just talk about the matters in dispute.

IE: As if they don't matter. Right?

ZJE: Yes. That was at that point in 2010. I thought, you know what, it would have been fantastic if I could have responded to this party after we had settled, if I could have said to him: “oh, you thought the Muslim tenant who you got on so well with before, that he was being incredibly offensive when he asked you to remove your shoes to go into your own property which was rented”. He was his tenant. “Oh, no, no, no, that's got nothing to do with it. They don’t wan't to be offensive, that’s just a cultural norm for some Muslim communities, not all” and actually that's become the norm in many households in the UK when they're atheists. You know, it's got nothing to do with you not being Muslim or to be offensive, but I couldn't say that.

So, that's when I decided, look, I also have interfaith background, you know that my father is Muslim Sudanese, my late mother was Christian Baptist (to be specific, Jamaican), and so I was brought up in a household where there was a mixture of faith and secularism as well. My father wasn't really a practicing Muslim, but I decided to become quite orthodox at the age of 13. And you know, I realize now that that must have been such an alarming time for my parents because none of my friends were wearing the hijab or orthodox in any way. You know, and I was very shy and wearing the hijab, long clothes and so on. My father kept trying to buy me mini skirts when he'd come to the UK and shorts and things like that, and I would never wear them. So, I thought I had sufficient background to tackle interfaith issues and conflicts, particularly as my Jamaican grandfather was an out and out Islamophobe. He didn't want me to fast in the house, he didn't want me to pray. You know, he’d complain, why if we call you, you say that you couldn't answer because you were praying. You know, if we want, we can pray in the toilet. Why can't you be like that and how can a 16-year-old girl be starving herself for, you know, 16-18 hours a day? This is ridiculous and primitive and so on and so forth. There we are, so Islamophobia doesn't conjure up for me fear, it conjures up interest and curiosity because I've experienced it aligning with so in coexistence with absolute love of me.

IE: Can you see this experience to be used somehow in Sudan? South Sudan, as far as I know, is more Christian and no longer part of the Sudan, but does it also apply in other contexts to Sudan?

ZJE: Interfaith per se isn't a specific issue in Sudan anymore. It was wonderful. I was very pleased that South Sudan was able to separate because I experienced the hatred towards South Sudanese. The religious difference was just an additional thing, but the root of it unfortunately, which now links to the conflict in Sudan, was race. So it was ethnicity. So, obviously all Sudanese are black, some are more black than others, so to speak. You know we have a whole spectrum of colours; some of them are as fairy skinned as you Idil, some of them are much darker than me. So I am somewhere in the middle, but it's really the ethnicity that has conjured up a lot of the hatred. This hatred started around everybody being victims of a political conflict so that was between Burhan and Hemedthi. They were workplace colleagues in the army. What happened was after they deposed Omar al-Bashir in 2021, they were colleagues in leadership. So Burhan was the leader, and Hemedthi was a deputy. That went sour for Hemedthi, and he tried to depose Burhan. What flowed from 15 April 2023 when that clash started initially turned into physical violence, where innocent citizens were caught in the crossfire. But there was an ethnic genocide in Darfur in 2003, and that geopolitical situation reinflamed, and exacerbated the situation in Darfur which has also spread more widely than just Darfur. So, there's an undercarriage of ethnic difference, but that's not the main trigger. The main trigger is that people are all struggling for resources. So, there’s a lack of food, a lack of clean water, there's disease. There's also a lot of conflict related sexual violence. The perpetrators are not just the Rapid Support Forces, they're also the Sudanese Armed Forces as well.

IE: We have seen that in many conflicts unfortunately, so thank you for putting the conflict into perspective for me and for others.

What can you say about the so-called peace talks that took place in Geneva a couple of months back, which unfortunately didn't reach anything?

ZJE: The difficulty for mediators as you know, Idil we need to be independent, we need to be neutral and not have any interest in the outcome. So unfortunately, many of the mediators from the UAE, America, the UK, they do have very clear interests in that region, or I should say in that country because of the Red Sea, and Sudan has the Port of Sudan. We know that the Houthis have made the Red Sea quite a dangerous area now, and so having ownership of the Port of Sudan would be really helpful or at least having open access to it. Also, the gold reserves in Sudan, there’s also oil there to a much lesser degree than gold. The gold, I mean, hundreds of tons of gold were being openly transported to Russia, so for the UAE, they can benefit from that. So, we have fertile land, so crops as well as cattle, so there are interests there. So when you have mediators, de facto not being neutral, so maybe the person that, so maybe the person that they choose to mediate, so the American person that they choose may well be neutral. And, but they represent a state that is not neutral, that does have an interest. So that is a difficulty, and they represent a state that is not neutral, but does have an interest. So, that is a difficulty.

In addition to that, the first request that was made by the Sudanese Armed Forces as a precondition to the talks in Geneva, was that all RSF soldiers were to leave Sudan in general, but specifically Khartoum as the start, because of the vast occupation of homes. My home, other people's homes have been occupied by the Rapid Support Forces. I know that because I asked somebody to check, and my home was completely empty apart from the dishwasher. A large apartment has been converted into the Department of Social Services by the Rapid Support Forces. So, at least my home is doing some good is also how I choose to think of it. Also, just circling back for a moment, you mentioned about sexual violence being used as a weapon of war. I can comment on that particular weapon of war in Sudan specifically, and I'm sure in other places, is a highly effective weapon. Let's say 10 civilians, and you kill five of them, the other five will feel even more motivated to kill the soldiers, but if you rape their wives, their daughters in front of them, they will lose all intention of fighting. Instead, they will actually just die, psychologically die and lose any motivation to resist you - so that's a far more effective. You know, you save on bullets, you save on killing your own soldiers by using that means, so that's why it's become so ripe.

IE: Right. So, it's a psychologically traumatising experience, that basically freezes you in that moment.

What can you tell us about the humanitarian part? The displaced people, refugees, starvation. The aid is not reaching the people. Do you see any negotiation room?

ZJE: So the reason that they're not willing to come to the ‘negotiation table’ is because they both think that they can win. Even if they were to shift in that idea, facing their losses, the humiliation of losing would be too enormous for them to accept. So therefore, they would rather die fighting than become prisoners of war, be tortured, humiliated if they lost. So food, humanitarian aid is also used as a weapon. If, for instance, I was to work, so you know that I do a lot of humanitarian work, but I can't do it in Sudan because I would be killed very quickly. That's if I wasn't attacked sexually first, because both sides do not want food to reach the other side because it will strengthen their soldiers, it will strengthen civilians who may then resist as well. Any aid that does get through is sold at very high prices, or even destroyed just so that the other side doesn't get hold of it. All of my work is done with Sudanese refugees of sexual violence, as well as just the general situation, famine and the insecurity in Cairo, Egypt.

IE: So, they could escape to Cairo?

ZJE: Yeah. So, it's only those who have chosen and were able to survive the travel because the travel is even very dangerous. There are lots of gangs and thugs and so on who steal everybody's mobiles, money, clothing, you know, all sorts of things. So, it's a treacherous journey from Sudan to Egypt. The journey, if it was just done straightforward, would take two to three days to Aswan. Generally it takes five days, and it can take longer. If suddenly you realised that the vehicle that you were in, that you paid lots of money, $500 to get on, then says to you “okay, this is as far as I'm going” and drops you in the middle of the desert to make the rest of the journey.

So, as you would hear from the Channel crossings between France and the UK, lots of money is spent to flee because people's homes have been occupied. It's not just because of the bombing, it’s literally that the Rapid Support Forces would come to your house and say: “we are going to live here now, you leave”. So, you’d be homeless on the streets. You might try family first, but then you'd be homeless as they become homeless. So, you know, nobody is safe. In Khartoum, certainly, and many other surrounding regions. The only place of relative safety is Port Sudan, perhaps there is a conspiration theory that’s being kept safe because

IE: They may escape at some point.

ZJE: Also because the external forces want Port Sudan. So, they won’t allow any bombing of Port Sudan because maybe it’s like you're difficult to defend it, you know, to refute it, because why would every where else in Sudan be bombed, their communities killed, murdered if they themselves don't commit suicide. We've had also a mass suicide of 120 women died in North Gezira called Rufaah, because they were so scared of being raped because then they have to have a baby. Some of them who become pregnant, a lot of them commit infanticides, so they kill the baby. So one of the things that we're trying to do in Egypt is those women who escaped (and) who are pregnant, we give them one to one psychological support for their trauma. We also teach them how to make different arts and crafts that they'll be able to sell. So, they make laptop bags and various other things with crochet and knitting, and clothing as well. They then can sell that, and that gives them some dignity, because all these women without exception, have arrived without their partners, their husbands and some of them have arrived without their older sons, teenage sons because during the attack RSF would take away their son and husband to fight with them. They brutalise them so much, sometimes kill them and so on and so forth - it’s a nightmare Idil. What really grieves me is how the world is intentionally ignoring it. There is so much focus, and I'm not saying they shouldn't be focus on Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine, but Sudan deserves, and the Sudanese people deserve to have that attention too because they are human too.

IE: Going back to this humiliation, I know you work a lot with shame and humiliation in your interfaith mediation as well. How do you think shame and humiliation can be handled in mediation, if at all or in negotiation?

ZJE: So I think Idil, the first thing is to understand how widespread shame is. So you and I are commercial mediators, trained as a commercial mediator, and shame is alive and well in commercial mediation. Do people talk about it? They don't talk about it. They might prefer to face saving. That you need to do certain things like going to caucus, you know, is a face saving exercise. The word shame and feeling ashamed, is definitely quite widespread, because losing money is something to feel ashamed about. So, in a commercial mediation necessarily one or both parties (or all parties) you know, many of the parties will have lost money, or about to lose money depending on the dispute, and that is shameful because it talks about your competence. Somebody says to you you're an incompetent CEO or an incompetent business owner, you're not just going to feel embarrassed or you're not going to just feel that you need to save face. There is, you may not articulate it, but you will feel ashamed. So how to recognize shame is the next thing you know when it shows up. Often, just like trauma, people are expecting people who endured trauma or who are feeling a sense of shame to perhaps act angrily, or very quietly, maybe very subdued, or maybe the anger is inappropriately high. There are so many other ways to present ways in which a lack of concentration, for instance. So, lack of it…

IE: Just like a trauma response even.

ZJE: Exactly, that's why I'm saying, I’m linking the two together. People don't generally speaking, commercial mediators would only be recognising trauma or looking for a trauma in a situation in a dispute where trauma was the presenting issue. If it's money or if it's assets, they would be looking more at the commercial side of things. You know that person might feel sad, that person might feel angry, but they don't talk about it as trauma, and they don't talk about it as shame. If they are going to recognize it, it's more likely that they would recognize trauma than shame, because shame is a more Eastern sort of concept you know, a Catholic concept, rather than being right here in secular Europe.

IE: It's not rational.

ZJE: Yes, absolutely. So alcoholic abuse, substance misuse, and mental health issues as well make people feel ashamed. They don't link it, trying to numb that person from the shame they're feeling. They'll talk about depression, but not shame.

IE: Thank you for this distinction actually. If there was a real negotiation between the warring parties, then these issues could be also addressed. At least this is the sense I'm getting from your comments. But we don't really see any of that happening in the current situation in Sudan. I guess that would be like the right conclusion?

ZJE: That's absolutely correct. Number one, because they don't have independent mediators, and number two, because of all the other geopolitical conflicts which could make a bigger difference to the whole world order. So, Russia and Ukraine will make a far bigger impact on the world order than Sudan.

IE: Lastly, I also saw some cultural heritage issues or institutions being looted and damaged by several groups in the conflict in Sudan. Do you think there can be a negotiation there? At least, this is a hope that I developed where the parties can find shared interest and see that they can agree on something.

ZJE: I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's idealistic that when people are only concerned with being the winner, they do not think about men, women, children. Cultural heritage would be last on the list because all they're thinking about is the worst nightmare would be if they lost, you know, what their future would look like. So they have to win and they'll do anything to try to achieve that. Both sides.

IE: How do we reverse the win-lose to a win-win if you want then?

ZJE: The only win-win would be a lot of money to be offered to both sides to drop hands. So we're talking billion, trillion sort of money and exile safety, because even with all the money in the world, you know, you're not going to be safe. You know we've seen this with recent murders of leaders of various groups. People can be reached wherever they are in the world you know, even if they go to another country they can be reached and they can be killed. So, it would need some kind of protection that forever amnesty, forever from being killed and to be protected, as well as a lot of money. Then, people would be willing to drop hands and leave the country, but at the moment they're not being offered that, as far as I know, they're being offered possibly peace in Sudan. You know, what could we do to engender peace in Sudan? Peace in Sudan means there would be a loser. So when I protest for peace, a ceasefire in Sudan, I do that in London maybe once a month, I am always branded as “pro-RSF” because to have peace means no justice. That's how a lot of Sudanese civilians and diaspora think of this, that if the army was to stop fighting the Rapid Support Forces, then there would be no justice for all those women who have been sexually violated, and all the men and children who have been killed. What I advocate for is peace first, like we had in South Africa. So, have peace first and humanitarian corridors through that peace. Let's get everybody fed and medically treated, and start rebuilding the infrastructure and then look for justice. At the moment, justice is very difficult, I can only speak about those who've been sexually violated because they don't know who the perpetrator is. How are they ever going to be able to identify them?

IE: Which kind of brings us to Syria, because there's a lot of talk about transitional government infrastructure, but there's no talk about transitional justice.

ZJE: Sure. The situation in Syria is very different from Sudan because, yes, of course, the same dictator idea, but worse than Sudan. We had a dictator for 30 years, they had it for 60 plus years, so they definitely had a worse situation, but they didn't need to be a mandate given to HTS. HTS got on and did it, I believe, through the support of Turkey. They didn't have to have public support for it, and the situation was right for them in that the environment was optimal for them just to carry on and do that. And so, for the Syrian people you know, if you had asked them, can we have a ceasefire with Bashar El Assad, they would have said “no”, you know, “can we have peace? Can he stay here and peace” and all of that, they would have absolutely not. Of course we'll never know. Whereas the situation in Sudan is can we just stop fighting, have peace and then talk about justice? Do you see what I mean?

IE: Yeah, yeah.

ZJE: If we removed the fighting parties, that's why I was talking about the amnesty and exile and so on, but how can you give exile to hundreds and thousands, or at least thousands of people who've been fighting, you know, those two sides? You can't do that within Syria, Fortunately, so far, people who were sympathizers, the Alawites, so again that interfaith aspect, a religious minority, and so far thank God, haven't been penalized for a leader who shared their religious minority. I hope that continues because a cornerstone of Islam as the Prophet Muhammad showed, was protecting religious minorities, whether they're atheists or of a different religion, protecting them. Which was why when Fathu Makkah (the Conquest of Mecca happened all the way back, back in 630s that’s why it was bloodless, because Islam and of course the Prophet Muhammad was the best of Muslims, he received the revelation, that's why it was completely bloodless.

IE: Anything you would like to add?

ZJE: Israel-Palestine, and what I would really love to see is a one state solution where yes, Muslims would be a minor majority just in headcount, they would be slightly in the majority from Jewish Israelis, and I think that we've seen this. I've just mentioned about 631 what happened then. We've seen when Umar ibn al-Khattab, one of the Prophet's companions came to reclaim Jerusalem from the Christians. Again, that was bloodless, and so it is possible for us all to live together, even with a government that is Muslim and Jewish, you know Palestinian and Israeli, it is possible. It's been done before. We know this from the Ottoman Empire how many Jews were very happily living there, were protected, etc, and in the Middle East in general, so it can happen. We just need enough civilian will, so Israeli civilians to have that will to push for it and of course for America to be persuaded that Jews would be safe, Israelis would be safe and to persuade Muslims that they must not retaliate because that is not Islam. Islam is peace and to live peacefully and to protect minorities, , religious minorities. The Prophet Muhammad, his uncle was killed by somebody called Was and M the person who ordered the killing, she was never penalized by the Prophet Muhammad. She became Muslim after that of her own fruit. So that is what we need. We need no revenge we need people to be collectively moving towards a healthy and safe and peaceful Israel, Palestine.

IE: Thank you very much Zaza.

ZJE: Thank you Idil. Thank you for the opportunity.

IE: Dr. Zaza Johnson El-Sheikh…. Dr Zaza Johnson Elsheikh has worked as a Commercial, Family and Workplace mediator since 2006. Zaza is a Home Office approved Mentor and a Distinguished Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators. Her mediation style and approach are informed her former careers as a Medical Doctor and Solicitor. Recognised as a faith leader in the UK, Zaza facilitates interfaith dialogue about complex issues on a bimonthly basis. Furthermore, as the President of the Sudanese Legal Network in the UK, Zaza regularly delivers humanitarian assistance to, and funds psychological support of Sudanese refugees in Cairo.

So that's it for now. If you like this episode, please follow WeCanFindAWay, its website that usually has a transcription of the episode. Like it. Share it. And also, please like the excerpts I share in my YouTube channel or in the Instagram account of We Can Find A Way. As always, I'd like to close by thanking musician Imre Hadi and artist Zeren Goktan who allowed me to use their music and photograph in the podcast. Thank you and hope to meet you in the next episode.