RADICAL ISLAMIC GROUPS AND THE AGONY OF THE CHURCH IN ETHIOPIA

RADICAL ISLAMIC GROUPS AND THE AGONY OF THE CHURCH IN ETHIOPIA 

Brother Daniel

Though Ethiopian Christians and Muslims are known by their tolerance and co-existence, it is a fact of history that for many centuries there were religious, political and economic conflicts between the Christian kingdom and its rival Muslim Sultanates. The conflicts were frequently followed by bloody wars which steered into the blood shade of millions of Ethiopian Christians and Muslims. The one which took place in the 16th century was so devastating that its traumatic memory goes beyond that generation.

According to recorded history, Ahmed Ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (best known in Ethiopian History as Ahmed Gragn or Ahmed the leftist) led a successful Jihad war against the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia. After receiving man power and weaponries from Ottoman Turkeys and Arab Mamluks, he opened assault and in 1529 defeated King Libne Dingle’s army at the battle called Shimbra Kure. During that time many Christians were killed, more than 90% were forcefully converted, many Churches were looted and burned, priceless manuscripts and antiquity artifacts were destroyed. The Jihad army was defeated and driven out of the Christian territories only after the Portuguese troops headed by Christopher Da Gama came to the aid of Ethiopian Christians.[1]

Recent Trends and Radical Groups in Ethiopia

Ethiopian Christians have been victims of Islamic Jihad for centuries. Currently there are radical groups who seek to use military power, intimidation and propaganda in order to make the country submit to their Islamic supremacist ideology. To mention few:

Takfir wal-Hijrah (al-Khawarij)

According to the American Foreign Policy Council’s World Almanac of Islamism, a branch of Takfir wal-Hijrah (“Excommunication and Exodus”), a radical group which originated in Egypt in the 1970s, was driven from Sudan and decamped first to Gondar and, subsequently, to a northern suburb of Addis Ababa. Since the group labels most fellow Muslims, including other Wahhabis, as kuffar (“non-believers”) the tension between Muslim communities was agraviated. Although it has caused less of a sensation since the 2004 death of its leader in Ethiopia, Sheikh Muhammad Amin, the group continues to exist. Details of the group’s activities, capabilities and resources within Ethiopia, however, remain sketchy at best.[2]  Terje Østebø, a well-respected researcher with extensive fieldwork on the Muslim community in the country has noted that Ethiopian adherents of Takfir wal-Hijrah’s extreme ideology clearly came to the fore in 2009 when they publicly announced that their members would refuse to pay taxes and hold ID-cards.[3]

Al-Qaeda

According to the American Foreign Policy Council’s World Almanac of Islamism, Al-Qaeda has also been active in Ethiopia. The netanization has long viewed East Africa as a priority within its overall strategy. The nascent al-Qaeda, then based in Sudan, sought both to establish working relations with Islamist extremists in Somalia and create training camps in ethnic Somali areas of Ethiopia in the early 1990s. When Ethiopia intervened in Somalia in 2006 and again in 2014, for example, al-Qaeda renewed its interest in targeting both the Horn of Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular. However, like with Takfir wal-Hijrah (above), accurate information on al-Qaeda’s netanizational make-up and capabilities in Ethiopia is far from complete, at least at the open-source level. Moreover, there are indications that the foothold al-Qaeda once held in East Africa through links to al-Shabaab has eroded, particularly as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has gained ground.[4]

Jamaat al-Tabligh

Jamat al-Tabligh is the biggest Islamic group in Ethiopia; their main purpose is the task of Da’wa (“the mission”). Researchers know very little about the origins of the Jamat al-Tabligh movement in Ethiopia. Some claim the movement was introduced by Indian missionaries living in Diasporas in South Africa and Kenya in 1970, within which Sheikh Musa is seen as the most important figure. During the Derg regime in Ethiopia, the Tabligh was active on a very small basis, being a very isolated movement that was mainly focused on internal issues and reforming the religious environment. After 1991, under supervision of Sheikh Musa, the movement grew to be one of the major movements of reform in Ethiopia because of their systematic netanization. Missionaries were sent out to various parts of the country in order to make house calls and set up a Jamat in different villages and cities. They were completely self-reliant and did not receive any external funding like the Salafi movement before 9/11. Together with the Salafi movement, they can be categorized as the Reform Islamists.[5]

Little is known about the group’s activities other than that its center of operations seems to be the Kolfe district of Addis Ababa, where it is especially active within the Gurage community that has migrated to the city from their mountainous homeland southwest of there.[6]

Al-Ithad al-Islamiyah (AIAI)

The American Foreign Policy Council’s World Almanac of Islamism documented that, following the January 1991 collapse of the Muhammad Siyad Barre regime, the rise of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI, “Islamic Union”) posed serious challenges to Ethiopian security—a situation that would persist throughout the 1990s. While the AIAI’s primary focus was on the establishment of an Islamist state in Somalia, it also encouraged subversive activities among ethnic Somalis in the Somali region of Ethiopia and carried out a series of terrorist attacks, including the bombing of two hotels in 1996 and the attempted assassination of cabinet minister Abdul Majeed Hussein, an ethnic Somali-Ethiopian whom the AIAI accused of being a traitor. AIAI’s hostility to Ethiopia arose from its toxic mix of Islamism with Somali irredentist designs on Ethiopian territory. The exasperated Ethiopian regime finally intervened in Somalia in August 1996, wiping out al-Itihaad bases in the Somali towns of Luuq and Buulo Haawa and killing hundreds of Somali extremists, as well as scores of non-Somali Islamists who had flocked to the Horn under the banner of jihad.[7]

Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (Al-Shabaab)

As it turns out, the defeat was only a temporary setback for Somali Islamists, who regrouped under the banner of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) with many of the same leaders as AIAI. One such leader was Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who had served as number two in AIAI and went on to chair the ICU’s shura and later head the Eritrea-based Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), after Ethiopian forces intervened in Somalia in December 2006 in support of the country’s internationally-recognized, but weak “Transitional Federal Government.” The presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia, which lasted until early 2009, occasioned an Islamist insurgency spearheaded by the radical Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (“Movement of Warrior Youth,” more commonly known as al-Shabaab), a group that was labeled a “specially designated global terrorist” by the U.S. Department of State in 2008.[8]

Madkhaliyya Group

Another schism appeared in 2006 with the emergence of the Madkhaliyya group in Addis Ababa. Organized around a certain radiologist in Mercato, this group adheres to the teaching of the quietest Saudi Arabian Salafi scholar, Rabi ibn Hadi al-Madkhali, and is seen as advocating a strict puritan lifestyle, as well as being ardently critical to the teaching of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Madkhaliyya group has later split into two fractions; a stauncher fraction called the Abrariun (after the main leader, Abrar) and a moderate fraction. The Abrariun has denounced the teaching of Rabi ibn Hadi al-Madkhali and developed ideological links to Yemeni Salafism, particularly the teaching of the Yemeni Salafi scholar Muqbil ibn Hadi al-Wadi.[9]

Muslim Intellectualist Movement

The so called intellectualist movement is a highly informal and devoid of any netanizational structure, it evolved around certain individuals advocating a set of ideas rather than initiating a particular movement. It first surfaced on the campuses of Addis Ababa University and other institutions of higher learning in the early 1990s, where it soon gained popularity among the Muslim students. Organised in small jama’at, led by individual figures referred to as an amir, and by offering lectures and initiating study-circles, the movement acted unofficially as the Muslim student movement, becoming important in fighting for the rights of Muslim students. Outside the campuses, the movement was able to exert influence through public lectures and through regular contributions in the Bilal magazine. Further, prominent members of the movement have been active in publishing books through the Najashi Publishing House. Although individuals within the movement still disseminate their ideas through lectures and seminars in Addis Ababa and its surroundings, the movement has lost much of its strength on the campuses. Instead, it has remained a rather elitist phenomenon, with its leaders and followers mainly being young university graduates and urban intellectuals.[10]

It has been ideologically affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, where the views of Hassan al-Banna, and in particular that of Yusuf al-Qaradawi were disseminated among its followers. It needs to be noted that the Muslim Brotherhood was never formally established in Ethiopia. Rather, it was the ideas of the movement that were disseminated; ideas being selectively chosen and interpreted within the particular Ethiopian context. This was reflected through the spread of Muslim Brotherhood literature, through public lectures and through articles in the Bilal magazine. Yet the Intellectualists were careful never to mention the names of the Muslim Brotherhood or its ideologues, wanting to avoid becoming too closely linked to a particular movement and fearing that an association with the Muslim Brotherhood would spark interventions from the side of the government.[11]

Islamist Affiliated Organizations

In addition to the above mentioned jihadi netanizations, there are so many netanizations which are led by radical Islamist individuals and are actively pushing radical Islam. These are:

  • ድምጻችን ይሰማ “Let Our Voice Be Heard” – A radical Wahhabi movement whose leaders were imprisoned and now freed under the new reform policy.
  • Badr International Ethiopian Muslims Federation – A mouthpiece of radical Ethiopian extremists based in USA.
  • Addis Ababa Ulema Unity Forum – Dialogue forum between Salafis and Sufis (2007-2009).
  • Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama’a – Salafi fraction emerging in the 1990s.
  • Ethiopian Muslim Development Agency – The main local Muslim NGO pushing Salafism.
  • Network of Ethiopian Muslims in Europe – Muslim diaspora netanization led by Salafists.
  • Al-Haramain Foundation – According to UN report, Al-Haramain Ethiopia Branch was linked to the Saudi Arabia-based Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation which presented itself as a private, charitable and educational non-governmental netanization. When viewed as a single entity, Al-Haramain was one of the principal NGOs active throughout the world providing support for the Al-Qaida network. Funding generally came from individual benefactors and special campaigns which targeted selected business entities around the world. Ethiopia Branch was listed on 6 July 2004 pursuant to paragraphs 1 and 16 of resolution 1526 (2004) as being associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of” Al-Qaida (QDe.004).[12]
  • International Islamic Relief Organization – NGO attached to the Muslim World League, and the largest foreign Islamic relief netanization in Ethiopia.

Terror Attacks against Christians

There are many Islamic terror attacks against Ethiopian Christians initiated or led by some of the above mentioned netanizations and groups. To mention few:

  • October 13/ 2000 In Arsi Zone, Qore area radical Muslims opened assault on Christians; 10 Christians were killed, 3 wounded, 2237 displaced, 1 Church and 194 Christian homes burned to the ground, 24 homes partially burned and 304 cattle robbed. [Abba Samuel, 2008:28-31]
  • September 21/ 2007 – In Jimma Zone in a place called Bashasha, 18 Christians were Killed, 38 wounded, 488 forcefully converted to Islam, more than 2000 displaced, 3 Churches and 850 Christian homes burned, 4 Churches looted. [Ephrem, 2008:172-75]

The following Information is taken from reputable website which documents terrorist attacks:[13]

  • Nevember 8/2011 – In Jimma Zone, Asendabo district radical Muslims killed 2 Christians and burned many Churches.
  • November 1/ 2011 – In Bale Zone radical Muslims attacked Christian students who were preaching the Gospel, 17 students were wounded.
  • May 13/ 2000 – In Afar region radical Muslims killed a Christian convert.
  • May 20/ 2009 – In Shewa Zone, Senbete town Muslim mob attacked Christians in the Church and wounded 3.
  • March 20/ 2008 – in Dessie town 2 Christians were killed by radical Muslims.
  • December 30/ 2007 – In Jigjiga town Muslims attacked Christians with grenade – 2 killed, 3 wounded.
  • September 5/ 2007 – In Arsi Zone, Kofele town Muslim mob had beaten a Christian to death.
  • June 1/ 2006 – In Jimma Zone, radical Muslims attacked Christians – 10 killed, 12 wounded, 2 Churches burned.
  • December 16/ 2006 – In Jigjiga town, Muslims attacked Christian businesses – 3 killed and 23 wounded.

Currently an outright attacks and cleansing of non-Muslims from Muslim dominated areas (e.g. Harrar, Jimma, Ethio Somali region) is undergoing.

[1] J. Spencer Trimingham. Islam in Ethiopia; Oxford University Press, 1952, pp. 85-89

[2] The American Foreign Policy Council’s World Almanac of Islamism; 2018; http://almanac.afpc.net/Ethiopia

[3] Terje Østebø. The question of Becoming: Islamic Reform Movements in Contemporary Ethiopia; p. 423

[4] Ibid.

[5] Jep Stockmans. Ethiopian Muslims in the Public Space of Addis Ababa since 1991; Universiteit Gent; 2014; Pp. 51-52

[6] The American Foreign Policy Council’s World Almanac of Islamism; 2018: http://almanac.afpc.net/Ethiopia

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Terje Østebø. Islamism in the Horn of Africa Assessing Ideology, Actors, and Objectives; International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI); 2010; P. 23

[10] Ibid., pp. 23-24

[11] Ibid., 32

[12] UN: https://www.un.net/sc/subnet/en/sanctions/1267/aq_sanctions_list/summaries/entity/al-haramain%3A-ethiopia-branch

[13] http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/christianattacks.htm