This paper seeks to examine the way Sudanese Muslims identify themselves in light of a White Arab Islamic hegemonic world through the discourse of the Sudanese Mahdist State. Throughout the inception of the Mahdist State, many scholars have produced works discussing its shortly-lived reign (1885—1898) in ways both disparaging and praiseworthy. The works for which disparage Muhammad ibn Ahmad, otherwise known as the Mahdi, are of the first produced sources regarding this topic. These are mostly English sources which are concerned with maintaining British hegemony on Egypt and sought to reclaim the territory of the Sudan which had been under Turkish governance since 1821. Thus, literature of this sort vilified the Mahdist State. Scholars such as Francis Reginald Wingate promulgated resentment against the Mahdiyya so as to influence British public opinion for support of an invasion on the Sudan. It wasn’t until the 1950s, however, that published material started to reflect a more academic evaluation of the Mahdiyya as oppose to a polemical or propagandistic account. The literature on the Mahdist State would take a pivotal turn from narratives drawing on political inspiration to intellectually motivated charges. The narratives for which are praiseworthy belong to Sudanese scholars who had attempted to vindicate the Mahdi after years of orientalist and Arab repudiation. Examining Sudanese representation of the Mahdi will help determine the extent to which Sudanese Muslims crave out their own Islamic narrative in light of a tradition and clergy which view the Mahdi as heretical. Scholars such as Omar Beshir, Makki Shibayka, Muhammad Al-Qaddal, Abdallahi Ali Ibrahim, and more discusses the Mahdi in political terms whereas Arabs from other parts of the Muslim world reduces him to a religious deviate. These two contrasting narratives allow for the Sudanese Muslim identification to take form. By drawing on the Mahdi, this paper argues that Sudanese Muslims are able to distinguish their Muslim, Arab, and political contexts from what has long been overshadowed by White Arab centrism.