African Affairs, 110/439, 253–274
doi: 10.1093/afraf/adr002
© The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved
Advance Access Publication 23 February 2011
RELIGION IN PUBLIC SPACES: EMERGING
MUSLIM–CHRISTIAN POLEMICS
IN ETHIOPIA
ABSTRACT
In Ethiopia, as in other parts of Africa, relations between Christians and
Muslims show a new dynamic under the impact of both state policies
and global connections. Religious identities are becoming more dominant as people’s primary public identity, and more ideological. This
development has ramifications for the ‘public sphere’, where identities of
a religious nature are currently presented and contested in a self-consciously polemical fashion. This shared space of national political and
civic identity may become more ‘fragmented’ and thus lend itself to conflict and ideological battle. This article examines recent developments in
the polemics of religion in Ethiopia, and the possible role of the state as
custodian (or not) of an overarching civic order beyond religion, as well
as the emerging rivalries between communities of faith. A crucial question is what social effects these polemics will have on communal relations
and patterns of religious coexistence. Polemics between believers have a
long history in Ethiopia, but a new and potentially problematic dynamic
has emerged which may challenge mainstream believers, their intergroup social relations, and Ethiopian state policy. Polemics in Ethiopia
express hegemonic strategies and claims to power, and are rapidly evolving as an ideological phenomenon expanding in public space. The
secular state may need to reassert itself more emphatically so as to
contain its own erosion in the face of assertive religious challenges.
RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES HAVE RETURNED as vigorous constituent
elements in communal and political discourse in Africa, including in the
Horn of Africa.1 The era of ‘socialist’ insurgencies and state-building
projects, from the 1970s until the early 1990s, ended in more or less
failed projects of national development in Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, and
*Jon Abbink (abbink@ascleiden.nl) is a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre in
Leiden.
This article is dedicated to the memory of my late friend and colleague Berhanu Gebeyehu,
who passed away suddenly on 19 July 2010. He made several insightful comments on
previous versions.
1. Compare a recent survey: ‘Pew Forum on religion and public life, tolerance and
tension: Islam and Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa’ (Pew Forum, Washington, DC,
2010).
253
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JON ABBINK *
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2. For a recent study, see J. Chesworth, ‘Fundamentalism and outreach strategies in East
Africa: Christian evangelism and Muslim da’wa’, in B. F. Soares (ed.), Muslim-Christian
Encounters in Africa (Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2006), pp. 159–86.
3. The word ‘polemics’ goes back, of course, to the Greek term polemikos, meaning
‘warlike’.
4. Even the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council noted with concern the ‘increasing
external Wahhabi influence within the Muslim community. The EIASC alleged that money
flowed into the country through Saudi-funded entities and NGOs, raising concern over
external non-Ethiopian Islamic influences.’ Cited in US Government, Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, ‘Ethiopia’, in the ‘International Religious Freedom
Report 2008’, <www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108368.htm> (2 January 2009). See similar
complaints in the 2010 report: <www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2010/148688.htm>.
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Ethiopia. A gradual process of people reverting to religion as a frame of
reference and often as a direct ideology for political action has become
quite evident since. Ethiopia is formally a secular state with constitutionally enshrined freedom of worship, but religion is very present in the
public sphere and functions as a key framework for community life. In a
way religion also offers an alternative civic identity in a society where politics tends to be monopolized and state repression has rendered it a risky
domain of activity.
I address the issue of the growing relevance of religion in Ethiopia’s
public sphere via the case of emerging religious polemics between
Christians and Muslims. Religious polemics in Africa are evident in many
other countries – among them Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, and Tanzania2 – but
are not well studied. The often imposing, intimidating verbal strategies
used impart social, political and scientific relevance to polemical
exchanges.3 My argument is that, in the past decade or so, religious
polemics in Ethiopia have expressed discursive battles about religious
‘truths’, communal identities, and power claims that take on a ‘primordialist’ character and sharpen boundaries between faith communities and
thereby between citizens. Such polemics tend to establish antagonistic
and hegemonic religious discourses in Ethiopia’s public space, marked
increasingly by declining democratic-political debate. In doing so,
polemics not only fuel tensions but challenge the political domain – that
is, the secular state order itself.
Paradoxically, the initially more liberal political atmosphere in Ethiopia
since the 1991 regime change facilitated the public expression of religion.
It also allowed local Christian and Muslim organizations to reconnect to
global trends – and organizations or preachers (both Muslim and
Evangelical) aimed to reform local religion and expand the faith globally.
This ‘global reconnect’ – meaning relations with powerful religious institutions and funding sources overseas and emphasizing more ‘fundamentalist’ forms of religion – has led to more doctrinaire positions and to
symbolic power struggles in the public sphere in Ethiopia. Local religious
elites and newly emerging and foreign-supported groups4 (notably
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The post-1991 situation
In May 1991 the insurgent movement EPRDF6 took over government
in Ethiopia and created new space for political, economic, and religious action, including party formation, elections, an independent
press, and religious self-organization. Most of that space – especially in
the political, civic, and media domains – is closed again, especially
since the highly controversial elections of 2005 and 2010 when a forceful re-establishing of EPRDF dominant-party rule occurred.7 Religious
life was relatively undisturbed, but seems to have taken on a dynamic
of its own.8 The post-1991 resurgence of religious discourse took
5. As a result, the contours of Ethiopian everyday urban life are gradually reshaped. The
advance of the Muslim and Christian reformists seems to have a clearly conservative if not
reactionary impact on people’s behaviour.
6. Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, still in power and led by Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi, who is also leader of the Tigrai People’s Liberation Front (TPLF),
the core party of the EPRDF.
7. Jon Abbink, ‘Discomfiture of democracy? The 2005 election crisis in Ethiopia and its
aftermath’, African Affairs 105, 419 (2006), pp. 173–99; and Kjetil Tronvoll, ‘Briefing: the
Ethiopian 2010 federal and regional elections: re-establishing the one-party state’, African
Affairs 110, 438 (2011), pp. 1–16.
8. See the IRIN news message of 2003: ‘Ethiopia: religion “new breeding ground for
conflict” ’, at <www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportId=43642> (1 December 2007).
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‘reformist’-Muslim and Evangelical) see ways to enhance their influence,
aiming at expansion and hegemony.5 A first analysis of the new religious
polemics shows that ideas of mutual toleration and cooperation are changing, if not declining. This tendency may also generate political problems
in Ethiopia, all the more so because polemics have a mass appeal due to
intensive utilization of new media technologies and funding from global
partners and financiers.
In Ethiopia, the side-effects of this emerging religious rivalry are not
only debates about what kind of national identity the country should or
should not have, but also more competition over public space, often in
the most literal sense: when and where to build mosques, churches, or
chapels; self-presentation in the media; public celebrations; and religious
‘noise’ production by means of loudspeakers.
Historically, Ethiopian society is marked by diversity and inter-religious
co-existence, but has always had some measure of religious polemics,
occasionally drawing in the power holders (emperors, nobles). A theoretical interpretation of today’s polemics shows that they express hegemonic
strategies and claims to power, and are rapidly evolving as an ideological
phenomenon, moving relatively autonomously from material and socioeconomic factors.
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9. Fieldwork in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa, and in rural areas in the South and Wällo) was
done in October 2004, in the November months of 2006, 2007, and 2008, July–August
2009, and September 2010.
10. See Terje Østebø, ‘The question of becoming: Islamic reform movements in contemporary Ethiopia’, Journal of Religion in Africa 38, 3 (2008), pp. 419, 423.
11. See the paper by a former government minister, Gebre-Ab Barnabas, ‘Ethnic and religious policies of FDR Ethiopia’ (paper for the First National Conference on Federalism,
Conflict, and Peace Building, 5–7 May 2003, Ministry of Federal Affairs and GTZ, Addis
Ababa), p. 24. It reflects the official policy of secularism, or separation of state and religion
and the proscription of interference in each other’s domains (Constitution, art. 11).
12. See their website: <www.eotc-mkidusan.org>.
13. See, for example, <http://blog.ethiopianmuslims.net/negashi/?p=325#comment92319> (25 May 2009) for diaspora Muslim critiques of some Ethiopian Orthodox
approaches to Islam. Christian website critiques on Muslims in Ethiopia also exist.
14. In Ethiopia itself the spoken and written word is still more important, owing to limited
Internet access.
15. According to the report of the (highly contested) 2007 population census of Ethiopia,
online at: <www.csa.gov.et/pdf/Cen2007_firstdraft.pdf> (20 March 2009).
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many forms, from moderate and accommodative to radical and militant. Many of my informants9 saw this as a new ‘democratic’ right, in
the sense of ‘do as you want’ and ‘further your own cause as much as
you can’. Most relevant are the renewed expansion of Islam in its
various forms (Salafism, Tabligh)10 and of Pentecostal-Evangelical
churches. They are challenging not only the traditional, more
Sufist-oriented, Muslim faith and Orthodox Christianity, but also the
secular state that is Ethiopia.11 There may also be a resurgence of
Orthodox-Christian belief – within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church
(EOC), for example via the Mahbere Qiddusan movement12 – although
this is largely reactive, bent on internal religious renewal and formulating an answer to Pentecostal-Evangelical churches. In large part, this
momentum of resurgence after 1991 reflects the genuine search among
both Muslims and Christians for spiritually fulfilling life and for community (re)organization after years of oppressive socialism (under the
Derg regime of 1974–91). But it has now morphed into serious religious competition. In these polemics, many new Internet sites of
Ethiopian Christians and Muslims, and especially diaspora sites, aggravate the ‘debate’ further in often biased and provocative ways.13 I will
not discuss these Internet exchanges except in passing, but they no
doubt need a major study in their own right, as their impact on local
Ethiopian discourse will grow.14 Internet debates in turn come to serve
as input for the local print media in Ethiopia, often translating and
adopting diaspora discourse.
In Ethiopia’s last census (2007), approximately 62 percent of the population was counted as Christian, 34 percent as Muslim, and the remainder
as of traditional faiths.15 The Muslims are Sunni, but with a growing
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Some historical roots of ‘religious competition’ in Ethiopia
Religious polemics in Ethiopia are obviously not a thing of the last 20
years only. One might even say that debates on religion started right in
the infancy of Islam in the year 615, when a first group of converts to
Islam arrived as ‘religious migrants/refugees’ sent by the Prophet
Mohammed from Arabia to the court at Aksum, where they were
16. These labels are not completely unequivocal. Notably, ‘Salafism’ can also refer to
more mainstream, moderate, pietist Islamic currents that would not agree to being described
as radical or ‘fundamentalist’. But they refer to ‘reformist’, stricter forms of Islam that reject
Sufism, saint veneration, Mawlid celebration. On the Bale region in Ethiopia see Terje
Østebø, A History of Islam and Inter-Religious Relations in Bale, Ethiopia (Almqvist and
Wiksell International, Stockholm, 2005), and also his ‘The question of becoming’.
17. Hussein Ahmed, ‘Coexistence and/or confrontation? Towards a reappraisal of
Christian–Muslim encounter in contemporary Ethiopia’, Journal of Religion in Africa 36, 1
(2006), pp. 4–22.
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number of Wahhabist-Salafist persuasion (an estimated 15 percent, not
registered as such in the census data).16 Within the Christian part of the
population there is also a shift from Orthodox (now 43.5 percent of the
Ethiopian population, a decrease compared to the 1994 census), to
Evangelicalism-Pentecostalism (now 18.6 percent). Compared to 1994,
Muslims increased by 1.1 percent to a total of 33.9 percent.
In these conditions of religious dynamism, strategies to reassert boundaries and identities have emerged, and have now turned into outright,
often fierce, polemics. Much of it is aimed at delegitimizing the other, at
‘warning’ their own congregation about the other faith, and – especially in
revivalist Muslim and Pentecostal circles – at ‘winning converts’. The
latter mainly target the Ethiopian Orthodox, while within the Muslim
community the ‘revivalists’ or ‘reformists’ rant against the mainstream,
Sufist-oriented Islam in Ethiopia, thereby advocating a purist and dogmatic form of Islam tending toward hegemonism and intolerance of
others. In addition, Muslim reformists publicly preach against ‘the mistakes’ of Christianity, and Christian pastors preach against the Muslim
faith and its ‘encroachment’. This is a relatively new phenomenon in
Ethiopian religious culture and increasingly occurs on religious holidays
when crowds are gathered in or near the mosques and churches.
The subject of religious debates and polemics is obviously controversial, in Ethiopia as in other African countries, and always has the subtext
of rivalry, especially when it is about the relationship between Islam and
Christianity. As noted, even academic researchers – Ethiopians or
foreigners – sometimes cannot avoid elements of a biased apologetic
approach in favour of one faith or the other17 – a failing that only close
factual analysis and historical contextualization can remedy.
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18. Some sources suggest that this first hijra occurred when his son Armah was emperor.
There seems no doubt that the latter in fact was an Orthodox Christian.
19. Šihāb ad-Dı̄n (Arab-Faqı̄h), translated by P. L. Stenhouse and annotated by
R. Pankhurst, Futū h al-Habaša. The Conquest of Abyssinia [16th Century] (Tsehai Publishers,
Hollywood, 2003 [originally written c. 1535]).
20. Šihab ad-Din, Futūh al-Habaša, p. 26. The Futū h al-Habaša also clearly demonstrates
the overriding urge of Ahmed ibn Ibrahim to convert the Christians. On his use of violence,
see for example Richard Pankhurst, The Ethiopians: A history (Blackwell, Oxford, 1987),
pp. 88–9.
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questioned with interest about their new faith by the emperor. The debate
that emerged in theological (and later historical) studies as to the possible
conversion to Islam of the then emperor Ella Ašama (asserted in certain
Arabic letters cited by Arab sources) is still not concluded and can be
seen as a first (seventh-century) occasion of ‘polemic’ – an exchange of
views about the virtues of their respective religions.18 A history of both
peaceful exchange and armed confrontations between religious political
units (such as the Christian empire or the Muslim sultanates in the east)
as well as steady expansion of Christianity and Islam followed. Critical
episodes were the devastating sixteenth-century war between the troops of
the Harar-based Muslim leader Ahmed ibn Ibrahim (nicknamed ‘Gragn’)
and the highland Christian state, starting in 1529. It led to a major
surge of ideological rivalry and polemics. While no doubt demographic
and economic pressures induced Muslim population movements,
religious-ideological elements in themselves became the motivating force.
The eyewitness account by Šihab ad-Din (Futū h al-Habaša)19 is replete
with violent religious discourse slighting the Christians and aimed at the
destruction of their heritage, motivated by religious argument and rhetoric.20 Somewhat comparable polemical comments from the Christian side
can be found in the royal chronicles of the time, written in Ge’ez.
A second critical phase was in the late nineteenth century. Although
interaction and intermingling of northern Muslim and Christian elites
had occurred throughout the centuries (notably in the eighteenth),
whereby political power and claims to sovereignty and territory rather
than religion in itself were the central issues, in the late nineteenth
century conflict came into the open. First under Emperor Tewodros
(1855–68) in the mid-1860s, and more importantly under Emperor
Yohannis (1878–89) who, faced with Egyptian and Sudanese-Mahdist
threats to Ethiopia, called for national unity in the political and ideological sense. In 1878 he issued an edict calling for mass conversion of the
Muslims in Ethiopia, a proclamation as rare in Ethiopian history as it was
unproductive. He made strenuous efforts to have people converted,
especially in the northern Wällo area. Thousands were, but the campaign
provoked resistance, including armed revolt and renewed religious
polemics, especially in works by Muslim ‘ulema from northern Ethiopia.
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259
Yohannis was killed in 1889 fighting the Mahdist invasion in western
Ethiopia, and his successor Emperor Menilik II (1889–1913) reverted to
a largely accommodative policy, allowing people to live ‘in the faith of
their fathers’, despite the challenge posed by his own conquests of new
Muslim-populated areas in the south and east.
Policies of Emperor Haile Sellassie (1930–74) and the Derg regime (1974–91)
21. As to his cautious policy towards the Muslim world, the works of Haggai Erlich
provide many clues: see The Cross and the River: Ethiopia, Egypt and the Nile (Lynne Rienner,
Boulder, CO and London, 2002) and Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia: Islam, Christianity and politics entwined (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO and London, 2007). For more on Saudi Arabia’s
policy towards Ethiopia in the 1960s, see Erlich, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, pp. 106–7.
22. See Éloi Ficquet, ‘Une apologie éthiopienne de l’Islam’, Annales d’Éthiopie 18 (2003),
pp. 7–36.
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Under Emperor Haile Sellassie a Byzantine-Christian-inspired imperial
ideology dominated national politics, which led to the denial of full citizenship to Muslims. They suffered from discrimination such as widespread exclusion from legal title to land and access to high-level public
jobs. The problematic basis of a common civic identity was never
resolved, because the Christian basis and political symbolism of the state
did not allow full incorporation of Ethiopians of different religious backgrounds. After 1944 Islamic courts were recognized (for personal, family,
and inheritance law), however, and no persecution or conversion campaigns vis-à-vis Muslims were mounted. Day-to-day relations between
Muslims and Christians were usually good, perhaps in part because of
mutual ignorance of the exact religious ideas of the other faith. To
Emperor Haile Sellassie is attributed the famous saying ‘The country is a
public, religion a private matter’. Although this was no doubt a healthy
principle in state affairs, he himself did not follow it, instead keeping
Orthodox Christianity as the virtual state religion.21 He also discouraged
any political expression of Ethiopian Muslims as Muslims, but allowed
them to freely practise their religion. In the 1950s the Emperor also, for
the first time in history, had the Koran translated into Amharic and published. But historical Ethiopian-Orthodox dominance was maintained,
implying restrictions on Islamic self-expression and self-organization.
While Muslim publications appeared in this period, no major religious
polemical literature came out; at least, none caused uproar in the public
domain. But on the local level, polemical works and preaching by both
sides must have been produced regularly, as the example of an unpublished critique of the Orthodox faith by one Sheikh Sa‘id Ahmäd of
Däbat in Boräna-Wällo reveals.22
During Emperor Haile Sellassie’s reign, however, the internal Muslim
debate on ‘which Islam’ and the nature of Islamic renewal that would
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The EPRDF era after 1991: revivalism and polemical consciousness
The EPRDF regime instituted more freedoms, but brought the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church under greater state control and continued
its marginalization in public life. Under government pressure in 1992
the EOC Patriarch was replaced by a more regime-friendly one, still in
power in 2011. Under the post-1991 regime, Islam was further supported: Friday public office hours were adapted to the mosque prayer
23. He underlined the importance of i’tidā l or ‘moderation’, and recognized the fact of
religious plurality.
24. See the interesting study by Mustafa Kabha and Haggai Erlich, ‘Al-Ahbash and
Wahhabiyya: interpretations of Islam’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, 4
(2006), pp. 519–38.
25. Ibid., pp. 530–3.
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erupt in the post-1991 years were already foreshadowed in the rivalry
between two Ethiopian (Harari) Muslim religious figures: Sheikh
Abdallah ibn Muhammad al Harari, the leader of Sufist-oriented
Islam and principled advocate of religious coexistence and Ethiopian
Islam,23 and Sheikh Yusuf ‘Abd al-Rahman, a Saudi-Arabia-trained
Salafist-Wahhabist-leaning leader.24 While they both lived outside
Ethiopia for long periods, at times banned by the government, they
inspired a new round of ‘verbal warfare’ in the 1990s about their respective approaches to Islam, both based in Islamic theology. Sheikh Abdallah
had built up an important civic-religious movement in Lebanon after his
exile, but retained influence in Ethiopia through his many writings, while
Sheikh Yusuf also continued to influence events in Ethiopia (notably in
the Muslim education system and in the turn to Salafist ‘reform movements’) from his home base in Saudi Arabia. Their rivalry can also be
seen as a religious polemic on specific points of Islamic doctrine,25 and
remained important throughout the post-1991 period. Many Islamic
polemical exchanges in Ethiopia hence still move between the two poles
of this debate.
After 1974 the Derg regime recognized Islam and accorded equal
rights to it. It attacked the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC) as a
‘bastion of feudalism’, expropriated its landed property including most of
its urban real estate, and ended its receipt of government subsidies.
Muslims made significant gains, including recognition of their religious
holidays, less job discrimination, more mosque building, and a higher hajj
quota. However, the Derg, in Marxist vein, saw both religions as things of
the past, a brake on ‘development’, and suppressed their public manifestation and institutional growth. Both Orthodox Christianity and Islam
were forced to restrict their public activities and foreign contacts.
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261
26. The Ethiopian magazine Reporter of 29 December 2003 quoted two senior Ethiopian
Muslim officials saying that Saudi Arabia had provided some 4 million riyal (some US
$800,000) to support the Wahhabist faction in the elections for the National Ethiopian
Council (Majlis) for Islamic Affairs.
27. Ibrahim Idris, ‘Freedom of religion and secularization of the state: the legal status of
Islamic law and Sharia courts in Ethiopia’, in H. G. Marcus (ed.), New Trends in Ethiopian
Studies: Papers of the Twelfth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, 1994 (Red Sea
Press, Lawrenceville, NJ, 1994), Vol. 2, pp. 151–6.
28. These were: Najashi (1992), Da’wa (1992), Bilal (1992/3), al-Manar (1993), Hikma
(1993), al-Risala (1993), Adhan, Salam, Furqan, Hilal, Ihsan, Hayat, Baraka, Ihklas, al-Hijab
(for women), Hijjra, al-Quds, al-Kawthar, Ze-Harari Taba (in Harar), al-Islam, Sawatul
Islam, Quddis, and Salafiyya. The state-owned Muslim weekly Al Aläm (in Amharic and
Arabic) had existed since 1942.
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times; the legal status of religious (shari’a) courts was solidified; and a
big expansion of Muslim religious education and mosque building
with foreign funding was allowed. But especially after 1995, when an
intra-Muslim conflict between two groups in the Anwar Mosque in
Addis Ababa killed several people, Muslim organizations were also
closely monitored. New Christian and Islamic NGOs emerged as well,
several from abroad and with clear proselytizing aims. The quota for
hajj travellers was greatly increased, and a freer, private religious press
became active. A large number of foreign Islamic teachers came to
Ethiopia to teach at new Islamic schools, and many Ethiopian
Muslims went for training abroad. Pentecostal-Evangelical colleges
also expanded, bringing new teachers and training local Ethiopian
staff. In general, foreign funding for religious life in Ethiopia greatly
increased, both for Protestant-Evangelical churches and for Muslim
institutions. As reported in the Ethiopian press, this also led to new
forms of foreign interference.26
Under the new constitution (1995), Ethiopia remained a secular
state,27 a model that worked but one that the Christian and Muslim establishments, as well as the new militant groups, were reluctant to accept. In
November 1994 a Muslim demonstration in Addis Ababa demanded that
shari’a be included in the constitution. This was rejected by the authorities, as it would jeopardize religious equality and the basis of a neutral
state. The Muslim claim was seen by the authorities and many members
of the public as going beyond a simple demand for equality, and demonstrated the thin line between political and religious ideas in Islam. Many
in Ethiopia, notably non-Muslims, rejected the re-introduction of religion
as a constitutional principle.
With the dawn of press freedom in the early years of the new regime,
several dozen new Islamic periodicals emerged,28 all in Amharic and
some of them containing small sections in Arabic. Much of the early
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29. Tim C. Carmichael, ‘Contemporary Ethiopian discourse on Islamic history: the politics of historical representation’, Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara 10 (1996), pp. 169–86;
Alessandro Gori, ‘Contemporary and historical Muslim scholars as portrayed by the
Ethiopian Islamic press in the 1990s’, Aethiopica 8 (2005), pp. 72–94; Hussein Ahmed,
‘Islam and Islamic discourse in Ethiopia (1973–1993)’, in H. G. Marcus (ed.), New Trends
in Ethiopian Studies: Papers of the Twelfth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, 1994
(Red Sea Press, Lawrenceville, NJ, 1994), Vol. 1, pp. 775–801; ‘Islamic literature and religious revival in Ethiopia (1991–1994)’, Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara 12 (1998), pp. 89–
108; and ‘Recent Islamic periodicals in Ethiopia (1991–1994)’, Northeast African Studies (N.
S.) 5, 2 (1998), pp. 7–21.
30. Hussein, ‘Islamic literature and religious revival in Ethiopia’, pp. 101–2.
31. Carmichael, ‘Contemporary Ethiopian discourse on Islamic history’, pp. 177, 183.
32. As with the Islamic papers, many of the EOC publications disappeared after some
years, but Mälläkät, Simi’a Tidiq, Hämmär and Zéna Betä-Kristeyan (the oldest EOC paper,
since 1955) are still appearing, each with a circulation of over 10,000 copies.
33. Miskәr, Karisma, Mili’at, Gäsame, Matyetis, and Impakt are some of the many
Evangelical-Protestant papers.
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content of these news magazines was discussed by Tim Carmichael,
Alessandro Gori, and the late Hussein Ahmed,29 and gives clear evidence
of the renewed self-consciousness of the Muslim community.
With these journals came a surge of polemical contributions, directed
by Muslim reformists to their own constituency attempting to combat ‘lax
religious attitudes’, but also aimed at asserting the superiority and rights
of the one faith above others. There were articles on the alleged fundamentalism among Muslims in Ethiopia, responding to articles in the
general Ethiopian press; pieces on the need for da’wa (‘call to Islam’) and
Islamic consciousness; and on defending the interests of the Muslims in
the country, for example through expansion of shari’a law courts and hajj
pilgrimage, creating more prayer space and prayer time in school and
offices, and supporting the wearing of the female veil in public institutions.30 There were also some articles trying to rewrite Ethiopian
history, in a rather biased manner.31
A religious-revivalist trend was also visible among the Christian population, perhaps to a lesser, or different, extent. The Christian church
organizations, however, also initiated religious newspapers and other publications for larger audiences. Among them were four magazines published by the EOC: Mälläkät (from September 1993), Astireyo (1993),
Simi’a Tidiq, Hämmär (1993, founded by EOC’s Mahbere Qiddusan
association), and Akotate (1994).32 The Pentecostal-Evangelical groups
similarly produced several magazines.33 Most Christian organizations
have more recently started to produce DVDs, VCDs and MP3 files to
promote religious doctrine, liturgy, religious songs, and other
consciousness-raising material. For the EOC this assertive ‘missionary’
moment was a relatively new thing, as historically they were not geared to
active conversion or revivalist efforts.
RELIGION IN PUBLIC SPACES
263
34. See, for a first inventory, Jacques Bureau, ‘Naissance d’une nouvelle presse
éthiopienne’, Bulletin de la Maison des Etudes Ethiopiennes 5 (1996), pp. 19–34.
35. Such as the activist Ethiopian Muslims Youth Association.
36. The average readership of these magazines remained small, from about 3,000 to 8,000,
with some exceptions.
37. Satellite TV stations from abroad will also become important.
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On the side of Christian and more secular-minded writers, in the past
years pleas were made in the regular press – the general private news
magazines of the 1990s, like T’obbia, Mogäd, T’omar, Minilik, Muday,
Béza, Mäqdala, Ethop,34 now all gone – to keep the ‘Ethiopian model’ of
accommodative inter-religious relations and not blight it with extremism
and messages of intolerance, as advocated by some of the religious activists, notably those under the influence of Salafism-Wahhabism and some
Pentecostals. While such contributions can be considered polemical, they
were of a different nature from the proselytizing or reformist prose mentioned earlier. These magazines nevertheless regularly contained unsubstantiated and sometimes alarmist reporting on the perceived Muslim
threat.
Internal strife and political pressure from the state after the 1995
violent incident at the Anwar Mosque, as well as the Somali Al Ittihad
al Islami bomb attacks in Addis Ababa in 1995–6, led to public outcry
and government suspicion, and indirectly to the closure of a number
of Islamic periodicals. Some Islamic organizations were also closed
down by the government.35 In 1998 the number of periodicals had
already gone down to eight and in 2008 only al-Islam, Salafiyya,
Quddis and Sawatul Islam remained. Most of the Christian and general
news magazines mentioned above are now defunct, succumbing either
to government pressure or commercial collapse.36 It should be noted,
however, that since the late 1990s religious news and messages have
issued increasingly via the new media. These materials (DVDs, VCDs)
are available not only near churches and mosques but also at crowded
pilgrimage sites on religious holidays. Religious books and leaflets also
continue to be sold.37
In the Muslim community, in addition to a spate of newspaper articles
on Islam (and its relations to the state and to Christianity), some highly
controversial texts appeared. In 1994 a document in Arabic, ‘Luqta
Ta’rikhiyya’ (‘Historical notes’) circulated in the Muslim city of Harar.
Written by a Harari, it gave a quite polemical and historically skewed
vision of Christian–Muslim relations in Ethiopia, attacking the ‘Amhara
expansion’ of Christianity, glorifying Islam in Ethiopia, and calling for
rectification of the ‘historical oppression of Muslims by the Christians’. It
ignored notions and practices of cooperation or coexistence. Not even the
episode of the first Muslim refugees at the court of the seventh-century
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38. Carmichael, ‘Contemporary Ethiopian discourse on Islamic history’, pp. 170, 183; and
Terje Østebø, ‘Creating a new identity: the position of Ethiopian Muslims in contemporary
perspective’, Svensk Mission Tidskrift 86, 3 (1998), pp. 447–8.
39. Hussein Ahmed, ‘Islamic literature and religious revival in Ethiopia’, p. 90.
40. See also Erlich, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, Chapter 7.
41. See notably Erlich, The Cross and the River, pp. 106–7, on the work of Egyptian writer
Yusuf Ahmad.
42. See Abul A’la al-Mawdudi, Guidelines for People Doing Da’wa (Najash Printing
Enterprise, Addis Ababa, 1996, in Amharic) and David Westerlund, ‘Ahmed Deedat’s theology of religion: apologetics through polemics’, Journal of Religion in Africa 33, 3 (2003),
pp. 263–78. Also Chesworth, ‘Fundamentalism and outreach strategies in East Africa’,
p. 172.
43. See Østebø, ‘Creating a new identity’, p. 432.
44. Alem Zelalem, ‘Saudi Arabia’s Wahabism and the threat to Ethiopia’s national security’, 2003, <http://ethiomedia.com/press/wahabism_threat_to_ethiopia.html> (15 October
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Ethiopian emperor was mentioned.38 This ‘history’ may have emanated
from the circle of Yusuf ‘Abd al-Rahman, the influential Salafist Harari
sheikh living in Saudi Arabia who was mentioned earlier.
After 1991, a greater foreign impact on Ethiopian Muslim polemics
could be discerned. Many more Ethiopian Muslims received religious
training abroad, and many translations of Egyptian, Pakistani, Sudanese,
and South African books on Islam were published,39 thus showing the
reconnection of Ethiopian Islam to global Islam.40 This also led to the
growing and persistent denigration of forms of local Islam and Sufism in
Ethiopia. In Egyptian and Saudi Arabian publications on Ethiopia arguments are found that make their way into Ethiopian Muslim polemics that
often give inaccurate and tendentious pictures of Ethiopian history, and
this further troubles public discussion on religious relations.41
Muslim polemical tracts were often works (translated into Amharic) of
foreign Islamic revivalists like the Pakistani author of Salafist persuasion
A. al-Mawdudi, or da’wa activists, like the influential South African
Muslim propagandist Ahmed Deedat (1918–2005),42 and the younger
Indian Muslim writer-preacher Zakir Naik. The latter’s work was distributed in large quantities in translation in Ethiopia, with some eight titles in
circulation in recent years (books and VCDs).
The enlarged space for Islamic and Pentecostal self-expression and
organization has had certain side-effects, and some groups have threatened
the Orthodox-Christian heritage in the country directly: Østebø mentioned
the existence of the ‘Islamic African Relief Agency’, reputedly accused of
looting Orthodox churches.43 In addition, Christian spokesmen and
several priests have started ‘warning’ people in statements and sermons
about Muslim designs and ‘radicalism’, with growing references to theological arguments. In the general press and on various websites, strongly
polemical papers were published on the ‘Wahhabist-fundamentalist’
danger within the Muslim community of Ethiopia.44 Books by the EOC
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265
2006); and Johannis Sebhatu, ‘The emergence of radical Islam in Ethiopia (1991–2004)’,
<http://ethiomedia.com/commentary/radical_islam_in_ethiopia.html> (5 August 2007).
45. See Abba Samuel, Do We Have Religious Tolerance in Ethiopia? (Mega Printing, Addis
Ababa, 2007, in Amharic), and Efrem Eshäte, Fanatic Islamism in Ethiopia (Ethio-Tiqur
Abay Printing, Addis Ababa, 2008, in Amharic).
46. Østebø, ‘The question of belonging’, p. 421.
47. According to Terje Østebø, Islamism in the Horn of Africa: Assessing ideology, actors and
objectives (ILPI, Oslo, 2010), p. 23, this may have been the work of ‘Takfir wal-Hijra’
groups.
48. ‘Bä-haymanot sәm yäšibbir tägbar fäsәmәwal yätäbale tassäru’, Addis Admas, 24
January 2009, at <www.addisadmas.com/news/news_item.asp?NewsID=1204> (25 January
2009).
49. The material symbol of the Biblical ‘ark of the covenant’, venerated in each Orthodox
church.
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cleric Abba Samuel (Do We Have Religious Tolerance in Ethiopia?),
Orthodox writer Efrem (Fanatic Islamism in Ethiopia), and some others
have continued the trend of expressing fear of growing Muslim influence.45
Writers in Muslim periodicals consistently tried to refute the danger of
‘Muslim fundamentalism’. Whether or not these fears are justified, there
are certainly many more reports of coordinated conversion and da’wa
efforts in Ethiopia, than there are on Pentecostal activities. As Østebø has
also suggested,46 their high level of informality makes the extent of these
activities difficult to investigate.
Many other events pointed to the sharpened antagonism between
( parts of ) the Christian and Muslim communities. In the past decade,
dozens of incidents were reported in the press, from clashes in Addis
Ababa, Harar, Kemise, and Gondar, to killings and church burnings in
the Jimma area and Begi (2006),47 or in Agarro, Alaba (2005) and
Wolenkomi towns (2010). Public displays of collective religious celebration in proximity of the house of worship of another faith often evoked
enmity and led to clashes. In January 2009 an Ethiopian newspaper
reported the arrest of 18 Islamist militants, allegedly members of an
armed group advocating for a theocracy to be violently enforced in
Ethiopia, preparing terrorist actions, and urging people neither to pay
taxes to the state nor obey the ‘man-made constitution’.48 Without going
into the details of these clashes, suffice it to say that such incidents are
much more numerous than under any previous regime.
Most of the Muslim polemical contributions in news magazines were
initially directed to the Ethiopian Muslims themselves, not to Christians,
exhorting readers to be better Muslims and cherish their own faith.
Involvement in da’wa and improving Islamic self-organization were
stressed. They also spurred people to be critical of the Christian faith and
often ridiculed the nature of the trinity, the tabot,49 the divinity of Christ,
and alcohol (ab)use. There were not many appeals to Christians to
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AFRICAN AFFAIRS
50. Published by the EOC, Addis Ababa, 1995.
51. Hikma 55 (1998).
52. No publisher stated, Addis Ababa, 1997 (in Amharic).
53. For an analysis of the man and his work, see Samadia Sadouni, ‘Le minoritaire
sud-african Ahmed Deedat, une figure originale de la Da’wa’, Islam et Sociétés au Sud du
Sahara 12 (1998), pp. 149–70, and Westerlund, ‘Ahmed Deedat’s theology of religion’.
Several of Deedat’s polemical works circulate in Ethiopia.
54. It was again available after the author’s death in 2002.
55. For instance, Ahmed Deedat, Is Jesus Really the Creator/God? (Najash Printing
Enterprise, Addis Ababa, 1995, in Amharic).
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engage in dialogue or common tasks in the context of Ethiopia’s wider
societal problems and national identity.
In the Ethiopian Christian tradition a few polemical works that were
directed at non-Christians appeared. An important polemicist and defender of Ethiopian Christianity in the early 1990s was Kidanä-Mariyam
Getahun, who published at least three books on the subject in 1991–5,
the last being Yä-Muslimu inna yä-Kristiyanu Wiyiyit 50 (‘Exchanges of a
Muslim and a Christian’, a response to a similarly entitled book by
Muslim writer Qämär Yusuf ). Kidanä-Mariyam later also wrote against
the Pentecostal-Protestant faith.
In 1998 an Evangelical Christian, Mäsmärä Solomon, published May
It Reach My Muslim Compatriots (Yidräs läMuslim Wägänoch), criticizing
Islam. This book in its turn evoked a polemical response in the Muslim
periodical Hikma.51 Later in the same year, the retired university lecturer
Alämayyähu Mogäs published Why Did I Not Become a Muslim? (Lämәn
Alsällämhum?),52 which was his quite provocative and forcefully worded
reply to, among others, the booklet Is Jesus God? by Ahmed Deedat, the
da’wa activist whose impact was growing in Ethiopia in the early 1990s.53
The Muslim response to Alämayyähu’s publication was one of indignation at the author’s abrasive style and remarks deemed insulting. The
book led to a court case and it was suppressed for some time.54 It was a
harsh though original contribution to the religious debate with a survey of
reasons for choosing not to accept Islam, strongly refuting the polemical
points on Christianity made by some Muslims. In 2007 a book edited by
Orthodox-Christian cleric Abba Samuel (with three printings in one year)
also specifically answered the Ahmed Deedat publications55 and went on
to pay attention to what the author regarded as the worrying Wahhabist
phenomenon in Ethiopia.
As noted above, many of the polemical exchanges in Ethiopia started as
internal, intra-confessional debate, with reformist Christians and Muslims
speaking to their own presumed constituency and giving advice on how to
‘properly’ conduct religious life. The Pentecostal movement, with its
emphasis on spiritual rebirth and personal renewal and accepting the
mediating and liberating force of Christ through the Holy Spirit, and the
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267
Recurring themes in religious polemics
Analysing the contents of religious (Christian–Muslim) polemics59 in
Ethiopia, one can discern several recurring themes. A major focus is on
the core theological differences: Jesus as God/Messiah or human being/
prophet; the reality and meaning of the crucifixion; the nature and unity
of God/Allah and the idea of the Trinity; Mohammed as the ‘last
prophet’; and so on. Here polemics tackle the ‘truth content’ of religious
tenets, which are then argued about in a question–response procedure.
56. Hasan Tau, Takfir: Correcting the misrepresentation of history (Mega Printing, Addis
Ababa, 2002, in Amharic). ‘Takfir’ literally means declaring someone kafir, ‘non-believer’,
non-Muslim. It is a loose radical-militant movement with its origins in Egypt in the 1960s,
even condemning (‘ex-communicating’) all Muslims not of their persuasion as nonbelievers, to be opposed with all means. For the purpose of combating their opponents and
to hide themselves, they can break all the religious rules of Islam (thus practising taqiyya to
its limits).
57. Østebø, ‘The question of becoming’, pp. 422–3.
58. The record of a vehement polemic between an Evangelical pastor and an EOC
preacher can be seen on the webstite EthioTube, <http://www.ethiotube.net/video/12122/
Ethiopian-Orthodox-Church-Response-to-Protestant-Pastor-14>, where the latter accused
the former of spiritual jihad against the EOC.
59. Both religions in their various shades reject the indigenous-traditional religions in
Ethiopia, usually labelled with the denigrating Amharic term arämäné (heathen, animist,
uncivilized). The epithet is incorrect, as most of these systems (among the Borana Oromo,
for example) have a developed moral rule system and a belief in divine force. In more recent
Christian works the term used is ahzab, while the Arabic term is kufur.
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strict and scriptural Salafist and Wahhabi movements within Islam are
prime examples of this trend towards conversion and purist ‘rebirth’, and
as such are not new in the history of either religion. Often the antagonisms within the two traditions (EOC vs Pentecostals, or mainstream Islam
vs Wahhabi-Salafiyya) seemed stronger than those between them. In 2002
for instance, the book Takfir: Correcting the misrepresentation of history 56
addressed the problem of the radical-violent Takfir wal-Hijra movement
in Islam and the faulty assertions of such foreign-inspired Muslim groups
on Ethiopia’s place in Islamic history. In 1994–5 a local Takfir wal-Hijra
group was reported to be active in Gondar, and later also in Addis
Ababa.57 This reflects the ongoing tension between mainstream and
radical Muslims. This situation has its parallel in the Christian community with the tension between the Orthodox Christians and the
Evangelical-Pentecostal faiths.58 Despite all this, however, in recent years
the internal polemics have been increasingly turned into ‘external’
polemics, more directly challenging the Christian or Muslim ‘opponent’.
There is no doubt that a ‘battle’ for souls and for power is going on that
has invaded public space, and this may carry challenges for the secular
state order.
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60. See Erlich, The Cross and the River, p. 205; and Erlich, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia,
p. 165. Also Mohammed Taib Abun Mohammed ibn Yusuf Abu Yusuf, Ethiopia and Islam
(Part 1): Nigus Najaši (Najashi Islamic Printing Enterprise, Addis Ababa, 1998, in
Amharic).
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Occasionally this discourse turns into an attempt to completely delegitimize the faith of others. In many of today’s polemical writings, there are
also repeated accusations of ‘having tampered with God’s word’, with the
Holy Books (the Bible or the Koran) allegedly not giving the ‘real, correct
word of God/Allah’). Such accusations are well-known from the polemical
traditions of the monotheist religions elsewhere, and are often fanciful
and unhistorical from a scholarly point of view.
Historical issues – like the alleged conversion to Islam of Nigus Ella
Ašama mentioned above – also figure prominently. Was the Ethiopian
emperor converted to Islam almost fifteen centuries ago by the first
Muslims at his court, or not? While later the Prophet Mohammed is
reported to have told the Arab Muslims to ‘leave the Ethiopians alone as
long as they don’t bother you’ – implying coexistence and respect for the
Ethiopian emperor’s positive role in maintaining the original Islamic community – militant Muslims ignore this point and focus on the ‘stolen heritage’ of a Muslim Ethiopia: after the alleged conversion of the emperor
(‘Ahmed al-Najashi’) the country should have been made an integral part
of the Muslim ‘umma, but this was prevented by Ethiopian-Christian
obstruction.60 This point always comes up in religious polemics, symposia, public gatherings, and other combative settings, whereupon a
nuanced view of the historical facts known so far usually falls by the
wayside.
Another issue is that of the qualitative differences in conversion attitudes and strategies. Among Muslims, the Salafist-Wahhabi groups
notably aimed at wholesale expansion and conversion via da’wa, first
within the Muslim community itself, and then among others. Orthodox
Christians (the EOC), knowing they were dominant, long had no active
conversion strategies, but largely as a response have now developed a
more active profile in this regard. This also has the effect of the EOC
becoming more intolerant of ‘deviant’ or lax religious practices among
believers. Pentecostal and Evangelical groups see proselytizing and conversion as a core task of their activity. They reject any local cultural practices – like traditional rituals, saint worship, ancestor veneration, and
performance of historical poetry or epics – that ‘interfere’ with their
service to God.
Similarly, there are arguments about the recognition of religious courts,
holidays, places, and times for prayer, notably in public buildings, in the
context of the secular state. Since 1974 Muslim public holidays are to be
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269
61. For example in Bilal 6 (February 1993) as cited in Carmichael, ‘Contemporary
Ethiopian discourse on Islamic history’, p. 76.
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celebrated publicly, and forms and places of worship recognized officially.
But 35 years of internal debate, growing empowerment, and assumption
of their place in public life since the positive measures of the Derg in
1974–5 and the EPRDF government since 1991 have not precluded
Muslims from continuing to raise the issue of their ‘disadvantaged position’. While much could still be improved, as for the Christians, this
culture of complaint has been lamented even in various Islamic magazine
articles.61
In the post-1991 era, much contestation emerged on the recognition of
areas and ethnic groups in Ethiopia (within the ethnic-federal system) as
‘Muslim’ or ‘Christian’, with resultant financial and political rewards. A
recent case in point is the Silt’e Gurage, a Muslim group officially split off
from the larger Gurage-speaking people, now with their own political
administrative unit (‘zone’). This in turn led to a growing influence of a
stricter, revivalist Islam in this zone. An issue related to this is the debate
on the nature and role of the state in general: in Ethiopia a secular state
recognizing the right to choose one’s religion and keeping proper distance
between state and religious life is constitutionally established, but continued ‘ethnic’-territorial disputes and controversy over the range of religious
law have maintained constant pressure on this model. In this political
context, the debate on the status or extension of shari’a law in Ethiopia –
resisted by the state, the Christians, and the more secular–minded – also
continues.
A new phenomenon is that of the ‘acoustic wars’: there is an emerging
‘discourse’ via massive religious noise production. Microphones attached
to every church, mosque, and chapel pound out sermons, religious services, calls to prayer, and religious songs, enveloping people who may not
want or need to hear them. This has become a new battlefront in religious
polemics and manifestly encroaches on public space. Informants note that
the religious noise wakes up people in the early morning hours, disturbs
the peace, and intimidates the public – which dares not protest.
Underlying much of the struggle is ‘religious demography’. There have
always been arguments over the number of Christians and Muslims in
Ethiopia, even if the data come from the Central Statistical Agency (CSA),
a professional institution that has long maintained good standards. The
public suspicion against the CSA data started with the 1994 census, when
the Prime Minister’s office first withheld the preliminary data reports for
almost a year. The same happened with the 2007 census data, when again
publication was delayed by more than eight months, and the public’s perception was that the authorities were tampering with the data. There is no
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62. See <www.eotc-mkidusan.org/English/News/index_January10_2009.htm> (5 February
2009).
63. See: ‘Ethiopia: Muslim critics reject national census for “missing millions”, <www.
jimmatimes.com/article/Around_Ethiopia/Around_Ethiopia/Ethiopia_Muslim_critics_reject_
national_census_for_missing_millions/31653> (5 January 2009); and a diaspora protest,
‘Ethiopian Muslims protested in front of Ethiopian embassy in Washington DC’, <http://
amalethiopia.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/ethiopian-muslims-protested-washington-dc/> (17
April 2009).
64. EOC believers always point out that in Mecca it is not allowed to build any Christian
church.
65. In public hearings before construction started, one priest asked the authorities: ‘Could
you please tell us what exactly are the achievements of Ahmed Gragn?’ Interview with an
informant from Gondar, in Addis Ababa, 4 December 2006.
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way to ascertain this. In the latest census report, the number of Ethiopian
Orthodox dropped and the Muslim figure increased (see above). Both the
EOC62 and the Muslim leaders strongly protested, saying their numbers
were far too low.63 The day the census results were to be published, the
government sent extra police to the predominantly Muslim areas of Addis
Ababa, notably Mercato. The only ones happy at the census outcome,
apparently, were the Evangelical-Pentecostal congregations: they were
more than 18 percent of the total population, an indeed surprising growth
in numbers. This rivalry about population figures, however, bodes ill for a
sound public discussion and population policy in Ethiopia. It may also
reveal a mistaken attitude among believers as to the importance of
numbers of faith communities in a constitutional, secularly defined state.
The polemical approach can also be seen in various concrete issues of
controversy visible in the landscape, such as the building of new churches
and mosques. Their number has increased greatly since 1991, especially
the mosques, but there is growing resistance and argument over locations.
A notably controversial case was the proposed mosque in the old city of
Aksum, a highly symbolic place, where construction has so far been
refused, due to the town’s role as EOC ‘capital’ – the reputed site of the
Ark of the Covenant (Tabot) – and the adamant refusal of the EOC clergy
to change Aksum’s status.64 The same refusal is heard in the old
Christian town of Lalibela. In Addis Ababa, few if any restrictions on
mosque building were imposed. In addition, there is debate on the recognition and construction of historical monuments. Frequently, rows erupt
over the veneration of historical places. An interesting case was the projected monument in the regional state of Amhara commemorating
Ahmed ibn Ibrahim ‘Gragn’, whom the authorities described simply as ‘a
historical figure’. In the late 1990s the government authorized the monument and construction was started. But the work was vehemently
opposed by local people and many Christians in the country at large,
because of the destructive legacy of Ahmed.65 In fact, the monument
under construction was destroyed twice in night attacks, and finally the
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271
Socio-political impact of religious polemics
Religious polemics in Ethiopia take on many forms, enormously stimulated by the possibilities of new mass media and communication
66. Interview with informant from Gondar, Addis Ababa, 4 December 2006. A recent
book by Teshome Berhanu Kemal, Imam Ahmed Ibrahim (Ahmed Gragn) (Addis Ababa,
2008) contends that the Christians were responsible for the failure of this project.
67. One recent example is the four-part VCD Tallaq Fät’ächa (‘The Big Confrontation’,
published in 2008 by the ‘Orthodox Spiritual Music Department’, Addis Ababa), the answer
of a young Orthodox-Christian preacher (Mihrete-Ab Asäffa) to a similarly entitled VCD by
Dr Zakir Naik, the Indian-Muslim da’wa preacher criticizing Christianity. There is also a
strong increase in Bluetooth file exchange on cell phones.
68. One Ethiopian Muslim weblog is <http://blog.ethiopianmuslims.net/negashi>. For
other aspects of Ethiopian Muslim diaspora activity, see Dereje Feyissa, ‘Setting a social
reform agenda in the homeland: the identity politics of Ethiopian Muslims in the diaspora’
(Working Paper 3, Diaspeace Project, University of Jyväskylä, Finland).
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project was given up. When the authorities searched for the culprits, local
people said: ‘We do not know who did this. Probably it’s the work of a
couple of baboons.’66
There have also been suddenly escalating physical clashes or riots
between believers after alleged ‘insults’ – as in Kemise town in 2001, in
Harar in 2001, and in Jimma and Gore in 2006, where people were killed
and property looted or destroyed. This is a relatively new trend. Other
physical violence was seen in the destruction of churches in the Jimma
area and the arson attacks by Muslim militants on dozens of Sufi
mosques.
Finally, within Ethiopia the written press as well as the newly distributed CDs, DVDs, VCDs and MP3 files with speeches, sermons, and
teachings are very important in inter-religious polemics.67 Especially in
the diaspora, the Ethiopian websites and blogs (and YouTube) are taking
over as sites of debate, competition, and mutual recrimination.68 On the
web there is, however, a growing proliferation of small constituencies on
both sides and in many shades, attacking virtually any position expressed
on any subject: against the Ethiopian government and its policy towards
the Christian churches and/or the Muslims, against secularism, against
Sufi Islam and its sheikhs and shrines, against the celebration of Mawlid
(the birthday of the Prophet), against the Orthodox Church, against the
Mahbere Qiddusan, against the Wahhabi, against the Salafists, against
certain academics, against the Pentecostal groups, against the Protestant
churches … . Needless to say, this bewildering array of usually negative
opinions and comments on the Web may serve to vent every blogger’s or
website visitor’s irritation, but in good polemical fashion they do not
seem to improve religious dialogue or coexistence, and within Ethiopia
meaningful debate is neither very visible nor very effective.
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Now we have those ‘well-educated’ religious people who think they know all. In the
Derg’s time there were Socialist university people telling us what to do and how to farm
and to forget religion; now we see the fanatics, Wahhabis and Pent’es [adherents of
Pentecostal congregations ], who tell us how to conduct our religion. These educated
people bring no good, they cause problems like that. … This is not the right way, and
they divert us from the faith of our fathers.
This critique of radicalizing discourse is emerging in circles of ordinary
believers. In this respect, it is interesting to note that in recent years some
new DVDs and other mediated messages produced by mainstream
Muslims in Ethiopia (in Wällo, for example) have appeared that attack
the ‘reformist/Wahhabist/Salafist’ approaches to Islam, or rather defend
the local way of life and its religious traditions. Similarly, EOC circles
offer critiques on Pentecostal interpretations of Christianity.
The assertions and statements in religious polemics and in the abovecited papers by journalists Johannes and Alem, and pieces by several
Muslim writers, are often brash and unreasonable. Sometimes they reflect
developments happening on the ground but they are also propagandist
and often not based on facts but on gut feelings, suspicion, and hegemonic discourse.
69.
Interview, Bistima village, October 2004.
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technologies, and are serious business. Their pace and intensity have
increased, reflecting the renewed self-consciousness of faith communities
but also giving the impression of verbal warfare. Indeed, a content analysis of religious polemics shows that they have turned into full-blown
apologetics, defending their own faith at all costs, inhibiting rational
exchanges, and showing a very tenuous relation to the facts. Indeed, the
polemics are framed in a closed epistemology of unassailable supernatural
‘truths’ that does not allow refutation or critique. As such, religious
polemics go on to predominate in public discourse and are less easily suppressed by the government than oppositional political debate. The effects
of polemic exchanges in this sense are a redrawing of boundaries, discursive over-confidence if not recklessness, decline of dialogue and toleration, and deep rivalry, extending into the social and even demographic
sphere. While these developments are a fascinating subject for the study
of religious identity formation, the politics of religion, and religious
experience itself, the social effects of polemical escalation amount to
blighting the relations between Christians and Muslims in Ethiopia.
These effects seep down from the urban areas, where most activists and
propagandists operate, to the countryside, where people of different religious persuasion were usually getting along and now have to face its negative aspects. As one Wällo female informant noted:69
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273
70. Also within the ruling party debate has emerged on the issue; see EPRDF’s magazine
Addis Ra’iy 2, 4 (February 2009), pp. 7–9.
71. See Éloi Ficquet, ‘Entrelacs de l’Islam et du Christianisme en Éthiopie’, Cooperazione,
Sviluppo e Rapporti con l’Islam nel Corno d’Africa (Instituto per l’Oriente, Roma, 2004), p. 87;
David Shinn, ‘Islam and conflict in the Horn of Africa’ (Lecture at the American University
of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon, 20 December 2004); Erlich, The Cross and the Crescent and Saudi
Arabia and Ethiopia.
72. Chesworth, ‘Fundamentalism and outreach strategies in East Africa’, pp. 168–9.
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On the side of the ‘revivalist/reformist’ Muslims, some writers now
tend to combat ideas of coexistence and mutual toleration, pleading
instead for Islamist supremacy, conversion of ‘unbelievers’, and ultimately
a Muslim state in Ethiopia. On the Pentecostalist side, isolationist and
superiority discourses can also be discerned, although more often they are
directed inwardly, and in rivalry mainly with the Orthodox Church.
While most of the Muslim and Christian publications and media products
thus still speak to their own constituencies and exhort believers to be
more strict and devout in obedience to the rules of the faith, their effects
are nevertheless noticeable in relations outside their religious community.
Religious thinking is becoming a more and more dominant frame of reference in which even political decisions and policies are judged. In recent
polemics it can further be noted that a purposely confrontational style is
developed, seemingly meant to delegitimize the faith of the other.
In view of the increasingly contested but so far functional secular state
order in Ethiopia – without a state religion, recognizing religious pluralism, avoiding the defence of political decisions with reference to God or
other supernatural forces, and constitutionally recognizing religious
courts in many domains of personal life – the impact of religious discourse and frames of reference in the public domain is experienced as a
growing problem.70 In addition, there is the continuing pressure of
outside forces – from neighbouring countries, the Muslim Middle East
and wider, globally active groups, exerting major financial and ideological
influence on the local scene, which can turn into a major political challenge.71 Thus, as emphatic missionizing efforts and the imposition of religion on others continue to generate controversy and communal tensions,
the secular state may need to reassert itself and try to contain its own
erosion by encroaching religious discourse via new political measures and
educational and social policies on a more structural level. So far, Ethiopia
seems to be able to monitor religious threats in the public sphere (including terrorism) better than most other African countries, for example
Kenya and Tanzania: here, as Chesworth has described,72 there were
events like the mihadhara, public polemical debates between spokesmen
of the major faiths, with a disturbing effect on the public order. In
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The precarious balance
In Ethiopia, ongoing religious polemics will further define the new arenas
of communal relations and rivalries in conditions of political closure.
Religion is actively and assertively constructed by communal leaders and
religious entrepreneurs as the normative, dominant identity of citizens.
This connects to its unmistakable social role as a source of community
feeling and spiritual consolation, as well as a legitimate alternative focus
of collective identification. But the construction of identity has taken the
form of competition for ‘truth’ and religious predominance in the public
sphere, with resulting claims on national Ethiopian identity. This antagonistic religious discourse is redefining public space in Ethiopia, and
tends to fill up the space vacated by politics with the decline of democratic debate and freedom. There is a precarious balance between the
faiths and between faith communities and the state. Ethiopia’s political
system has gone through major upheavals in the past decade, such as the
controversial 2005 elections, street killings, rural repression, human rights
problems, and a recent spate of restrictive laws concerning the press,
federal powers law, NGOs, and terrorism. Against the background of
such political and economic insecurity, growing inequality, and the democratic deficit, the polemic appeal to religion as the dominant element of
personal and communal identity will only grow and continue to pose
major challenges to the political order.
73. See for example, ‘Ethiopia imprisons Christians accused of defacing Quran’, <http://
theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2010/11/ethiopia-imprisons-christian-accused-of-defacingquran-14677> (12 January 2011).
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Ethiopia there are regular state clampdowns on the most eye-catching
polemical products (in December 2009, for example), and believers are
warned to calm down. In 2010, editors of a Muslim news magazine were
imprisoned on rather unconvincing charges, while several people alleged
to have ‘insulted’ Islam were also arrested, though without serious evidence.73 Experience has shown, however, that such state efforts come and
go. In the absence of state reassertion over expansive religious claims, one
might expect new phases of civil unrest and conflict in the country that
would make the ‘ethnic’ clashes of the past seem pale in comparison.