For the first time in decades, Sudan is to allow non-Muslims to drink alcohol. The country has also scrapped laws that had made leaving Islam potentially punishable by death, the justice minister said.
The raft of amendments comes a year after Islamist dictator Omar al-Bashir was toppled following mass protests against his three-decade rule.
Justice Minister Nasredeen Abdulbari said in an interview Saturday evening on state television “Sudan now allows non-Muslims to consume alcohol on the condition it doesn’t disturb the peace and they don’t do so in public,”
While Islamic tradition forbids the faithful from drinking, Muslim-majority Sudan has a significant Christian minority.
Abdulbari, part of a transitional government that took power after Bashir’s ouster, also announced that converting from Islam to another religion would be decriminalised.
Many Muslim-majority countries apply Islamic laws making leaving the faith punishable by death. Bashir, who had enforced such rules after coming to power in an Islamist-backed 1989 coup, was toppled by the army following mass protests over the country’s worsening economic crisis.