Remarks made on 16 January 2014 at Bolling Air Force Base in Maryland.
by David Shinn
Ethiopia: Muslim-Christian Relations
David Shinn
Adjunct Professor,
Elliott School of International Affairs, GWU
Presentation at
Bolling Air Force Base, Maryland
16 January 2014
Historical
Background
The Muslim-Christian relationship in Ethiopia has a mixed
historical background. Ethiopia is
located on a religious fault line, although the relationship between the two
religions has been reasonably cordial in recent decades.
Christian rule has prevailed in the Ethiopian
highlands since the early 4th century. Early in the 7th century a group
of Arab followers of Islam in danger of persecution by local authorities in
Arabia took refuge in the Axumite Kingdom of the Ethiopian highlands. As a result of this generosity, the Prophet
Mohammed concluded that Ethiopia should not be targeted for jihad.
Not all Muslims took this message seriously; subsequent
contact was less cordial. In the late 15th
century, Islamic raids from the Somali port of Zeila plagued the Ethiopian
highlands. In the first half of the 16th
century, the Islamic threat became more serious when Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al Ghazi
rallied a diverse group of Muslims in a jihad to end Christian power in the
highlands. The Ethiopians finally
defeated this threat by the middle of the 16th century.
Although Wahhabi missionaries from the Arabian Peninsula
made efforts to penetrate Ethiopia beginning in the 19th century,
they had little success until recent decades.
During the first half of the 1800s, Egyptian/Ottoman power in
neighboring Sudan made periodic incursions inside Ethiopia. In 1875, the khedive of Egypt tried
unsuccessfully to conquer Ethiopia entering from the Red Sea. The last major organized threat from Islam
occurred in 1888 when the forces of the Mahdi in the Sudan sacked the former
Ethiopian capital of Gondar and burned many of its churches. Subsequently, both the Ethiopians and the
Mahdists harbored rebels opposed to the other side, creating a tit-for-tat
situation that has periodically continued to the present day.
The Impact of Sudan
The last manifestation of this tit-for-tat practice
occurred late in the 1990s when Ethiopia provided refuge and support to the
Christian and animist Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which opposed the
government in Khartoum. For its part,
Sudan’s Islamic government supported a number of Ethiopian rebel groups and
tried to export Islamic fundamentalism to Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s concern was greatest when the
National Islamic Front led by Hassan al-Turabi tried to export Islamic
fundamentalism throughout the region.
In the mid-1990s, Ethiopia joined the so-called
U.S.-led front line states initiative that included Ethiopia, Eritrea and
Uganda and was designed to put military pressure on the Islamist regime in
Khartoum. At the time, Ethiopia’s greatest
concern about Sudan was the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. The Ethiopia-Sudan relationship changed
dramatically after the outbreak of conflict in May 1998 between Ethiopia and
Eritrea. Both Ethiopia and Eritrea
decided they needed Sudan as an ally so they could focus on fighting each
other. Ethiopia-Sudan relations have
been good ever since.
The Impact of
Somalia
Relations between Ethiopia and Muslim Somalia have
been equally troubled over the years.
Some of the historical Muslim attacks on the Ethiopian highlands
originated in what is today Somalia or Somali-inhabited parts of Ethiopia. After Somalia’s independence in 1960, it
pursued a policy called Greater Somalia aimed at incorporating the
Somali-inhabited section of Ethiopia (about one-fifth of Ethiopia’s land area)
into Somalia. The Greater Somalia effort
also tried to incorporate the Somali-inhabited portion of northeastern Kenya
and all of Djibouti (about 60 percent Somali and 40 percent Afar) into Somalia.
In the late 1970s, Somalia invaded the
Somali-inhabited Ogaden region of Ethiopia.
Ethiopia was only able to push back the Somali troops with the help of
Cuban forces and Soviet military advisers and equipment.
In the mid and late 1990s, an Islamic group in
Somalia, al-Ittihad al-Islami, carried out several attacks inside Ethiopia,
including an attempted assassination of Ethiopia’s minister of
telecommunications, an ethnic Somali. Ethiopia cracked down hard on al-Ittihad,
even attacking some of its bases across the Ethiopian border inside Somalia. Al-Ittihad disappeared as a viable
organization early in the 21st century but was replaced by other
Islamist groups that Ethiopia considered a threat.
Fearing a spillover of Islamic fundamentalism from
Somalia, Ethiopia sent troops at the end of 2006 into Somalia at the request of
the Nairobi-based Somali Transitional Federal government to defeat the militias
of the Islamic Courts, which had taken control of much of the country. While Ethiopian troops easily defeated the
Islamic Courts, Ethiopia found itself as an occupying force in Mogadishu.
After the collapse of the Islamic Courts in Somalia, a
more extreme group known as al-Shabaab (the Youth) increased its support by
urging Somalis to join the fight against the Ethiopian occupiers. This rallying cry was effective; the
Ethiopians were unable to extend their control beyond Mogadishu and faced constant
attacks in the capital by al-Shabaab. Ethiopian
forces remained in Mogadishu until January 2009 when an African Union force was
finally strong enough to hold part of the city on behalf of the weak Somali
government. Ethiopian forces
subsequently, however, have periodically crossed into Somalia to support Somali
government forces against the al-Shabaab threat.
Internal
Muslim-Christian Relations
According to the 2007 census, there were about 25 million
Muslims in Ethiopia or almost 35 percent of the population. Many Muslims argue the percentage is higher,
and they could be correct, but there are no statistics to support their claim. It is important, however, to put the
significance of Ethiopia’s Muslim population in perspective. Estimates as of 2010, put the total number of
Muslims in Ethiopia at 29 million or more than the number of Muslims in Saudi
Arabia, Syria or Yemen and almost as many as in Sudan. Although the Muslim community is a minority
in Ethiopia and it is diverse in terms of ethnicity, it is an increasingly
important part of society and political life.
While Sufi tradition has historically been high in
Ethiopia, there is no agreement today on the percentage of Ethiopian Muslims
who follow a Sufi tradition. I have
heard estimates ranging from a high of 80 percent Sufi followers to the
suggestion that a majority of Ethiopian Muslims now hold non-political Salafist
views.
The Muslim population is scattered throughout Ethiopia
but concentrated on the southern, eastern, and western periphery. Ethnic groups that are entirely Muslim
include the Somali, Afar, Harari and a number of smaller groups along the Sudan
border. The largest ethnic group in the
country, the Oromo, has a significant Muslim component; Oromos I have spoken
with estimate that between 50 and 60 percent are Muslim.
By comparison, according to the 2007 census, Ethiopian
Orthodox followers account for almost 44 percent of the population, Protestants
almost 19 percent and Catholics less than 1 percent. The significant increase in the percentage of
Ethiopia’s population that has recently become evangelical Protestant has
alarmed some leaders in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church even more than their
concern over Islamic fundamentalism. This is often related to the aggressive
efforts by some Protestant groups to proselytize Ethiopian Orthodox and Muslim
believers.
The government of Ethiopia, whose leadership remains
largely Christian, recognizes both Christian and Muslim holy days. The government accorded legal status to the
Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs in 1992, lifted restrictions on travel to
Mecca, and repealed the ban on the importation of religious literature. The 1994 Constitution implicitly sanctioned
the use of sharia and the 1999 Federal Courts of Sharia Consolidation
Proclamation explicitly did so. Sharia
courts are being used more frequently for civil cases so long as both parties
agree to take the matter there. The
ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has opened up
senior government positions to Muslims.
But otherwise cordial Muslim-Christian relations have
been periodically interrupted by negative incidents. In 1995, for example, there was a clash
between police and Muslims at the al Anwar mosque in Addis Ababa. Some Ethiopian Muslims have complained that
the government has been interfering in the affairs of the Supreme Council of
Islamic Affairs for the past two decades.
Impact of
Wahhabi/Salafi Influence
A growing number of Ethiopian Islamic scholars, fluent
in both Amharic and Arabic, have studied in Saudi Arabia and subsequently returned
to Ethiopia as part of the Wahhabi movement. Others are studying at al-Azhar in
Cairo. They strongly oppose the
Sufi-inspired traditional practices and in a few cases encouraged the
desecration of traditional Oromo Sufi Muslim tombs. There were even unconfirmed reports of the
destruction of mosques frequented by followers of Sufi Islam.
In 2004, the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs voted
to remove all executive members of the Council and replace them with strong
anti-Wahhabists. Some Muslims charged
that the government was behind the move.
Behind the scenes, money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States flowed
into Ethiopia to build more mosques, Islamic schools and orphanages. The orphans receive a fundamentalist
education and are expected to encourage others to follow this theology. One Saudi-based Islamic charity, the
al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, completed 16 mosques as of 2000 and had plans
to fund 259 more. Al-Haramain
subsequently was shut down and it is not clear how many mosques were actually
constructed. It reached a point where
the Ethiopian government reportedly asked Saudi Arabia to press Saudi funding
sources to cease and desist.
Reports are conflicting as to the degree of influence
the Wahhabis have had in Ethiopia. Some
of my interlocutors—Muslim and Christian—downplay the influence. Where the Wahhabis have had influence, it
seems to be among the young, poor and unemployed. But that constitutes a big chunk of Ethiopian
society. There are also increasing
numbers of Muslim women wearing the complete cover, including a veil over the
eyes. This was almost unheard of during
my time in Ethiopia in the late 1990s. During
my visits to Ethiopia in the last ten years, some Ethiopian officials have
expressed serious concern about the impact the Wahhabi influence will have 20
or 30 years from now.
Where Is the
Muslim-Christian-EPRDF Relationship Headed?
The ruling EPRDF had a reputation for successfully
cultivating the Muslim community at least through the 2010 elections. If you overlay on a map of Ethiopia
predominantly Muslim parts of the country with voters’ support for political
parties, the EPRDF has generally done better in Muslim areas than in non-Muslim
areas.
In 2012, there was, however, a setback in the EPRDF’s
relationship with the Muslim community. There
were Muslim protests in Addis Ababa charging that the government is interfering
in Muslim affairs, trying to pack the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs with
persons loyal to government policy, and promoting the views of the small,
moderate al-Ahbash Islamic movement, which has a base in Lebanon but links to
Harar, Ethiopia.
The government denied the charges and argued that a
small Islamic faction is trying to create an Islamic state in Ethiopia. The government arrested about 75 Muslims
including the leadership of the group that was criticizing the government. This only worsened the situation.
The point person for religious affairs in the government
told me in September 2012 that Salafists are welcome in Ethiopia as long as
they don’t try to force their beliefs on others. He added that the Wahhabis can also flourish
in Ethiopia so long as they abide by the Ethiopian constitution. The al-Ahbash movement has such a tiny
following that it is hard to believe it is at the center of this most recent
conflict between the government and a segment of the Muslim community.
Although the Muslim-Christian and Muslim-EPRDF
situation has been relatively quiet in recent months, the problem has not gone
away and it is not clear to me where it is headed. Ethiopia does have the advantage of an
effective and tough security apparatus that can probably counter any challenge
posed by a Muslim splinter group. Broad
disaffection in Ethiopia’s large Muslim community is, however, another matter.
El Aaiun (Occupied Territories), January 18, 2014
(SPS) – Moroccan authorities released Thursday Sahrawi political prisoner
Hassan Mohamed Lehsan after completing 10 years in prisoner, the sentence
issued against him by a Moroccan court, according to the Ministry of occupied
Territories and Community Abroad.
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