Ansar were thus loyal more to the political descendants of the Mahdi than to the religious message of Mahdism. A movement that spread widely in Sudan in the 1960s, responding to the efforts to secularize Islamic society, was the Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan al Muslimin). Originally the Muslim Brotherhood, often known simply as the Brotherhood, was conceived as a religious revivalist movement that sought to return to the fundamentals of Islam in a way that would be compatible with the technological innovations introduced from the West. Disciplined, highly motivated, and well-financed the Brotherhood became a powerful political force during the 1970s and 1980s, although it represented only a small minority of Sudanese. In the government that was formed in June 1989, following a bloodless coup d'état, the Brotherhood exerted influence through its political wing, the National Islamic Front (NIF) party, which included several cabinet members among its adherents. Christianity Sudan was predominantly Coptic Christian at the time of the arrival of Islam in the seventh and eighth century. The indigenous Nubian Coptic Christians continued to compose a substantial portion of the regions' population up until the nineteenth century, when most were converted to Islam under the Mahdist state (1881-1898). The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria's influence is still marginally present in Sudan, with several hundred thousand remaining adherents. In 2011, the predominantly Christian areas in South Sudan seceded to form a new country. Christians in the Nuba Mountains, which the Sudanese government retained for the region's mineral wealth, remain particularly subject to persecution. The Sudanese government's military actions against the Nuba people have been labeled ethnic cleansing. Roman Catholicism There were approximately 1.1 million Catholics in (pre-partition) Sudan, about 3.2 percent of the total population. Sudan forms one ecclesiastical province, consisting of one archdiocese (the Archdiocese of Khartoum) and one suffragan diocese (the diocese of El Obeid). The vast majority of Sudan's Catholics ended up in South Sudan after the partition. Indigenous religions Each indigenous religion is unique to a specific ethnic group or part of a group, although several groups may share elements of belief and ritual because of common ancestry or mutual influence. The group serves as the congregation, and an individual usually belongs to that faith by virtue of membership in the group. Believing and acting in a religious mode is part of daily life and is linked to the social, political, and economic actions and relationships