መሀመድ አወል (ያ ኸይረል ወራ)

Muslims are among the marginalised groups that had no direct access to land until the 1974 revolution which brought important and far-reaching changes to the socio-political and religious position of Ethiopian Muslims. Although research on Islam and Muslims in Ethiopia shows impressive progress, focusing on regional and contemporary Islam and marginalised groups over the last 30 years, the historical dimension has yet to appear. This research, based on authoritative published and unpublished sources, examines the history and situation of Muslims before and during imperial and immediate post-revolutionary Ethiopia. It also analyses multi-dimensional issues including exclusion, perception, religion, majority, minority, power relations, groups and state. the situation was far more complicated than that, and one about which I had a surprisingly limited awareness. Most non-Ethiopians, including the immediate neighbours of Ethiopia, also believe that Ethiopia is predominantly Christian. The more sophisticated might believe that there is a Muslim minority - and it was to learn about that population that drew me to Ethiopia in the first place. But it is not a minority. About 55 per cent of Ethiopia's parliament is Muslim and representatives from the country's Islamic community insist they are at least 50 per cent of the population. While the US State Department estimates that this number is a bit lower, Islam might actually be the religion with the most adherents in Ethiopia. If there is any "Muslim quarter" in Addis, it must be an old one. Christianity was the first religion to arrive in Ethiopia - but only in the north of the country. Where the capital, Addis Ababa, is located, the area of Shawa, was the domain of a Muslim sultanate in the early 8th century. Most historical narratives portray Ethiopia's as a Christian story. If Islam is even mentioned, it is associated with disconnected tribesman in the lowlands who battled Christian kingdoms in the highlands. But history is written by the powerful and now academics are rediscovering the Muslim history of this country of such noble heritage. As I met people from Ethiopia's Muslim community, I was struck by their diversity. Most Ethiopian Muslims are influenced by Sufism, and follow the same Sunni rites as their neighbours in Yemen, Somalia and Djibouti (the Shafi'i rite) - but there are also adherents of other Sunni rites, and a significant Salafi movement within Ethiopia. There are dozens of ethnic and linguistic groups among Muslim Ethiopians, from all areas of the country. But what they share is a long history of discrimination against them. Early Christian-Muslims relations in Ethiopia were very good - the Prophet of Islam sent several Muslim refugees to live among Christians in Ethiopia, who had a very high opinion of the king at that time, who later became Muslim. In the medieval era, Christian Ethiopians under the Zagwes refused to be drawn into the European crusades against the Muslim world, which led to Saladin giving the Ethiopian Orthodox Church a monastery in Jerusalem. In the same era, Muslims and Christians lived in separate kingdoms and sultanates in Ethiopia, but in peaceful coexistence - and their example proves that deeply religious and pious people of different religions need not be at war with one another. But with the rise of the Solomonic dynasty in 1270 that came to an end. That dynasty, like many others of its age, was expansionist and aggressive, leading to a great number of conflicts with Muslim sultanates over a period of hundreds of years in Ethiopia. The length of the Solomonic dynasty is staggering - Haile Selassie was its last Emperor, and his reign ended in 1974. He saw the establishment of a modern Ethiopia, but not a modern educational system - at least, not for Muslim Ethiopians. The historians and educators I interviewed in Ethiopia bemoaned the standard of education among Muslim Ethiopians, explaining to me that during Haile Selassie's tenure, Muslim regions did not receive the same attention as Christian regions and few modern educational institutions were established. Haile Selassie had a formula for Ethiopia: one country, one people, one religion. Muslims were not part of that equation. The revolutionary regime that overthrew Haile Selassie, the Derg, introduced education for all, but as a communist movement, Muslim communities still suffered discrimination. Many of those whom I met were from that generation - a generation that had access to education, and began to learn about their religion in a modern sense. With the establishment of a more democratic constitution in 1994, Muslim Ethiopians began to try to build more institutions for themselves.