Islam In Ethiopia Research Articles

Konfessional'naya situaciya v Efiopii: rost vliyaniya islama

The article provides a brief historical overview of Islam in Ethiopia, its position in the empire before 1974 and its relationship with Christianity, as well as the changes that took place under the communist regime of Mengistu and after its overthrow in 1991. This work is also devoted to the current place of Islam in Ethiopia, the Christian-Muslim dialogue and the main directions of the spread of Muslim ideology in the country.

The Right of Religious Institution to Acquire Legal Personality in Ethiopia: Emphasis on the New Proclamation to Provide Legal Personality to Ethiopian Islamic Affairs General Council

Besides, the separation of the teachings of each religion and the way religions organize their followers complicates matters, historical contexts make it different for how religions are recognized and legitimate. Countries accept the principles of freedom of religion and state separation of religion, but the application of these principles varies from country to country. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a legal body per Article 398 of the Ethiopian Civil Code, while other faith organizations have access to the statutory body at the registration of the relevant government. Therefore, this paper comparatively examines a legal framework which is prepared by the Ministry of Peace to address these gaps and related questions of the Muslim community, and how Ethiopia recognizes and governs religious institutions that are closely linked to their history. Thus, it concludes that, with the long history of Islam in Ethiopia, and the number of adherents of the religion, it would be appropriate to proclaim by the legislature rather than on the registration of ordinary institution. Keywords: Religious institution, registration, legal personality, Islam, Proclamation, Ethiopian Legal framework. DOI: 10.7176/DCS/10-10-03 Publication date: October 31 st 2020

The ʿAjamization of Islam in Ethiopia through Esoteric Textual Manifestations in Two Collections of Ethiopian Arabic Manuscripts

While the word ʿAjamī traditionally refers to texts in many languages written with the modified Arabic script, the meaning has been expanded in the concept of ʿAjamization used in this volume. ʿAjamization is construed in this article, as it is operationalized in the volume, to refer to the various tangible and subtle enrichments of Islam, its culture, and its written and artistic traditions in Africa. 1 In this sense, it is not only the modification (enrichment) of the Arabic script that defines ʿAjamization, but also other features such as the content and the aesthetics of the texts. This paper focuses on the cultural dimension of ʿAjamization in two collections of Ethiopian Islamic texts written in Arabic. 2 These texts encompass magic-related materials, including theurgic texts and invocations to jinn. 3 I will examine these texts to ascertain whether they reflect a local cosmology, even if they are not written in ʿAjamī but in Arabic. 4

Religious freedom and the political order: the Ethiopian ‘secular state’ and the containment of Muslim identity politics

The 2011–2014 controversies between the Ethiopian Government and Muslim communities on the role of Islam in Ethiopia have highlighted the precarious nature of religious relations in Ethiopia. Statements by public figures and religious leaders recently have drawn attention to the nature and scope of the Ethiopian secular state order. This paper describes the recent Muslim protest movement and the response to it by the government in the light of the secular state model. While the challenges to it also extend to the large Christian community in Ethiopia, the problems became prominent mainly in the case of the Muslims, who contest perceived ‘government interference’ in their community life and self-organization. I present an overview of key recent events and of factors inducing conflict between state and religion. The discussion makes reference to more general debates on the ‘secular model’ in Ethiopia and to the familiar though somewhat worn-out paradigm of ‘identity politics’. State repression of Muslim civic protest in Ethiopia revealed insecurities of the state: rather than an instance of the process of ‘othering’ a religious community, we see a case of political crisis, and a search for new modes of governance of diversity and communal religiosity in Ethiopia. As a result of the contestations, however, the secular order of the country will not be threatened, but modified.

Competing Muslim legacies along city/countryside dichotomies: another political history of Harar Town and its Oromo rural neighbours in Eastern Ethiopia

ABSTRACTBetween the Middle East and Eastern Africa, the city of Harar is often considered as the main historical centre of Islam in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Until recently, the cultural hegemony of the Muslim elites inhabiting Harar was commonly opposed to the almost pagan behaviours of the Oromo – or ‘Galla’ – farmers and cattle herders living in the wide rural vicinity of the town. The 1995 Constitution provided the different ‘ethnolinguistic nationalities’ of the new Ethiopian federation with the same institutional recognition. However, the institutionalisation of the two Harari and Oromo ‘nationalities’ seems to foster the historical duality between the city-dwellers and their close neighbours. This article proposes another political history of Harar and its ambivalent Oromo partners through the local dynamics of the Muslim city/countryside models. It reveals the both competing and complementary orders that have probably bound together the populations of Harar and its rural hinterland for more than five hundred years.

Hussein Ahmed (1954-2009)

Hussein Ahmed (1954-2009) Eloi Ficquet (bio) Hussein Ahmed died on the 6th of June 2009, 29th of Genbot 2001 of the Ethiopian calendar, or 12th of Jumâdâ al-thânî 1430 of the Hegirian year. He was in his 55th year. The academic community of Ethiopian studies lost one of the most active and prominent scholars involved in the study of Islam in Ethiopia and in the Horn of Africa. Hussein had been a member of the history department of Addis Ababa University since 1977, and he became a full professor in 2003. He devoted most of his work and teaching to the history of Ethiopian Islam and Ethiopian Muslims, mainly since the nineteenth century. His PhD dissertation was defended at Birmingham University, UK, in 1985. It was exceptional at that time, at the height of the Derg regime, for an Ethiopian student to be allowed to go to study abroad in a Western country. He preferred Birmingham to the School of Oriental and African Studies (a place where several Ethiopian academics were trained) because he wanted to work under the direction of P. F. Moraes de Farias at the Centre of West African Studies. His dissertation dealt with the history of Islam in Wallo, his region of origin in the central highlands of Ethiopia. He studied the processes of conversion to this religion that have taken place since the eighteenth century, as part of a movement of revival of sufi brotherhoods in the Horn of Africa. He focused on the respective [End Page 145] roles of "Clerics, Traders and Chiefs," three main categories of actors who contributed to the transformation of the area into an interconnection between Muslim and Christian powers. Following on from his PhD work, he brought out a more synthetic book entitled Islam in Nineteenth Century Wallo, Ethiopia: Revival, Reform and Reaction, which was published by Brill in 2001. Click for larger view View full resolution Hussein Ahmed, 2002 (Eloi Ficquet). His many articles dealt with different aspects of Ethiopian Islam: life histories of leading religious figures in Wallo;1 the components of Islamic religious education;2 works by Muslim Ethiopian scholars and the evolution of Muslim discourse and Muslim literature in the political evolution of Ethiopia;3 and the risk of confusion that may lie behind the apparently generous idea of peaceful coexistence between Christians.4 Recently he started research on the history of slavery5 and on Yemeni [End Page 146] communities in Ethiopia that were composed of very active traders and were expelled by the military regime after the revolution of 1974. He contributed significantly to the gathering of sources and critical notes for a volume on Arabic literature in Africa.6 He also published an article on the history of Addis Ababa University, expressing his attachment to the institution and his concerns about the reforms that have been carried out recently and the decline of historical studies.7 Through his academic life, Hussein Ahmed contributed to the recognition of the role played by Ethiopian Muslims in the history of the territories that were to become a nation. Despite the fact that they had been treated as second-class citizens, or enemies within, under the old regime, the processes of economic, political, and spiritual construction of the contemporary Ethiopian nation-state could not have been achieved without their will to participate. Nevertheless, Hussein did not sing the praises of an ideal state of tolerance between religious communities, a generous idea that he considered, however, to be an intellectual trick that could hinder the understanding of persisting sterotypes and conflicts. One of his favorite topics, in articles and in private discussions, was the state of the art of his field of study.8 For long, he deplored its underdevelopment. Derogatory biases conveyed by the dominant historiographical schemes of the Christian kingdom and the lack of integration—not to say the segregation—of Muslims in public affairs, including the academy, were some of the causes of this situation. For some time, at the time of the transition between the Derg and the federal regime, Hussein was almost alone in drawing the attention of the international community of Ethiopianists to Islam. He welcomed with...

Islam in Nineteenth-Century Wallo, Ethiopia: Revival, Reform and Reaction (review)

Reviewed by: Islam in Nineteenth-Century Wallo, Ethiopia: Revival, Reform and Reaction Mohammed Hassen Islam in Nineteenth-Century Wallo, Ethiopia: Revival, Reform and ReactionHussein AhmedLeiden and Boston: Brill, 2001. Pp. xx, 228; 2 maps. Cloth $104 US, $77 EUR This book is the first to be published on Islam in Ethiopia since the publication of John Spencer Trimingham's Islam in Ethiopia in 1952. The author, Hussein Ahmed, professor of history at Addis Ababa University and an emerging authority on Islam in Ethiopia, is also the author of several articles on the subject. The history of Islam and the role of Muslims in Ethiopia have been neglected because, according to Professor Hussein, "bias has manifested itself in both the neglect and a priori distortion of Islam and in certain prejudices which have formed an integral part of the ideological panoply of the Christian dynasts" (190). In Islam in Nineteenth-Century Wallo, Ethiopia: Revival, Reform and Reaction, Hussein Ahmed exposes the received wisdom that considers Islam a negative factor in Ethiopian history and presents Islam as a positive factor that has shaped the history of that country. [End Page 147] Though the book is mainly a study of Islam in one region, it is a truly a major work on Islam in Ethiopia. It is a fascinating book because it depicts the progress of Islam in Ethiopia in chronological and thematic schemes in five phases: "Early phase; the period of expansion and consolidation; period of confrontation; period of steady expansion and period of revival and internal reverses" (58-59). It is also trail blazing, because the book is based on solid scholarship establishing conclusively that Islam as a religion and a way of life is an integral part of Ethiopian history. Professor Hussein breaks with the intellectual tradition of students of Ethiopian history and culture, who exclusively identify the country within the Christian paradigm (xviii), and suggests the need for a new paradigm that sees Ethiopia as the country in which Muslims and Christians have lived side by side peacefully, cooperating and trading with each other more often than fighting against one another. It is now clear that Ethiopia has not been a Christian island surrounded by a Muslim sea, but the land of both Christians and Muslims. From this perspective, Professor Hussein'sbook is not only an excellent contribution to our knowledge of Islam in Ethiopia, which is crucial in itself, but also adds to our understanding of Christian society in Ethiopia. Anyone interested in understanding the mechanism for the spread of Islam in Ethiopia (as well as in Africa), its interaction with Christianity and traditional religions, or the role clerics, traders, and political leaders played in its consolidation will be rewarded by reading this long-expected book on Islam in Wallo, Ethiopia. It is a remarkable book for the high quality of its scholarship, the richness of its sources, the lucidity and beauty of its language, and the clarity with which complex issues are dissected and discussed. According to Hussein Ahmed, Islam was introduced into Wallo from Ifat in northeastern Shawa (60), where it had flourished since the eleventh century, if not earlier. During the time of Imam Ahmad (1529-1543) of Adal, otherwise known as Ahmad Gragn, "the Wallo region was a theater of several engagements between Christian and Muslim forces and served as a base for the latter's incursions into the north." (13). It was during this period that Islam, as a religion and culture, consolidated itself in the Wallo region. Although the death of Imam Ahmed in 1543, the defeat of the Muslims, and subsequent pastoral Oromo migration weakened the pace of Islamization, Islam remained an integral part of the region. [End Page 148] Islam in Wallo is closely associated with the Oromo people. In the last quarter of the sixteenth century seven pastoral Oromo groups settled in the Wallo region. Among those groups, the Yajju and the Wallo were dominant. The Yajju formed their own Muslim dynasty that dominated the political landscape of Abyssinia from 1756 to 1854. The Wallo group not only gave its name to the region and formed a second Muslim dynasty, the Warra Himano dynasty (c. 1700-1916), but...

An historical‐anthropological approach to Islam in Ethiopia: issues of identity and politics*

The study of Islam and Islamic populations in Ethiopia has been relatively understudied since the great survey of J.S. Trimingham published in 1952. Ethiopian Islam is interesting both because of its antiquity (since the inception of Islam itself) and because of the particular patterns of interaction and symbiosis with an, until recently, predominantly Christian culture. A socio‐cultural and historical explanation of patterns of tolerance of Islam and Christianity since the 16th century deserves to be developed. In addition, the relationships between religious and ethnic identification among Ethiopia's diverse populations are not well known and need further scrutiny. In the last decade, new issues of religious identity and communal political identity of Muslims in Ethiopia emerge in the wake of the political and socio‐economic reforms in federal Ethiopia and the impact of ‘globalization’ processes in the cultural sense. While Ethiopians Muslims have in recent years gone through a phase of revivalism and self‐assertion, they have remained rather impervious to ‘fundamentalist’ ideological movements in both a social and political sense. This article gives a brief historical overview of Islam in Ethiopia, its position in the pre‐1974 empire and its relationship with Christianity, and the changes under the Communist Mengistu regime up to 1991. Finally some of the major changes since 1991 are discussed, presenting challenges for debate and further socio‐historical research on the place and role of Muslims in Ethiopia and on the relationship of Islam (and Christianity) with ‘modernity’, ethnicity and group identity in Ethiopia.

Islam in Ethiopia

Islam in Ethiopia

Islam in Ethiopia

Islam in Ethiopia

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviews in this article: The Qur'ān as Scripture. By Arthur Jeffery. The Christian Interpretation of Religion. By Edward J. Jurji. The Religions of Mankind. By Edmund Davison Soper. Christ's Hope of the Kingdom. By Alexander McLeish Islam in Ethiopia. By J. Spencer Trimingham Ahmadiyyat, or The True Islam. By Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad. The Arabs in History. By Bernard Lewis. The Arab Refugee Problem. By Joseph B. Schechtman. Arabian Highlands. By H. St. J. B. Philby. The Arabian Peninsula. A Selected, Annotated List of Periodicals, Books, and Articles in English. Great Britain and Egypt, 1914–1951. London, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1952. Turkish Crossroads, Bernard Newman, Philosophical Library Inc., New York, 1952. I Sing in the Wilderness. An Intimate Account of Persia and the Persians. By Olive Suratgar. Muslims in Arabia and Africa. By Professor Mahmud Brelvi. Hayati. By Dr. Ahmad Amin, Matba' at Lujnat‐il‐ta' lif wa‐al‐tarjamat wa‐al‐nashr Prayer. By Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer Islamic Constitution. By Kemal A. Faruki Rulers of Mecca. By Gerald de Gaury

Islam in Ethiopia

Islam in Ethiopia

Book Review: Islam in Ethiopia

Book Review: Islam in Ethiopia