Responding to Mr. Shewakena

I appreciate the analysis given by Mr. Shewakena in regards to the plight of Ethiopian Muslims and the general political climate and how to deal with it. To be fair, I have heard similar sentiment from some of my Christian brothers and I never thought for a moment that most of the Ethiopian Christians were as extreme in their views as we have seen from some elements lately. But there are major issues that are perplexing the Muslim community when it comes to the overall attitude of the Christian community when the rights of Muslims are trampled upon. Ethiopian Muslims have raised their voices whenever their rights were wantenly abused by the government and other extremist groups but we have never heard a word of support from those who are opposing the government for any number of reasons. None of the popular media and the pundits ever raised their voice when our rights were trashed time and again. When the opposition finds a cause to fight for, they will not hesitate to march on the streets of western nations, but, when human right issues of the Muslims are presented, they become a non-issue for most of our Christian counterparts.


I have to disagree with Mr. Shewakena’s point that both Christians and Muslims are equally oppressed and discriminated in Ethiopia. That was never the case and it is still not today. Historically, a big chunk of the nation used to belong to the Church until the end of Haile Selassie’s reign. The Church accumulated huge amount of property throughout the decades partly because of its favorable position with the monarchy and partly by taking much of the earnings from the Ethiopian peasantry. And Ethiopian Muslims contributed their tax dollars for the building of many churches because they had no other choices. The government in power gave back much of the property that was confiscated by the military junta to the church and as a result it gained much of the influence it had throughout the Solomonic dynasty. If we really need to straighten our house, we should start by calling a spade a spade.


Most of the mosques that we see in the nation now are built after the last monarchy was removed from power. Up until that time, the existence of Ethiopian Muslims was a mere footnote in the nation’s history and their suffering was unknown to the rest of the world. But, we know for a fact that Christianity was the official religion of the nation and all the kings and the emperors were crowned by the Abuna to tell the world that Ethiopia was a Christian nation. This does not in any way negate the fact that Christians suffered under successive feudal rulers but it needs to be mentioned that the sufferings of the Muslims was much worse. For instance, we can all basically agree that, except for the ruling class, Ethiopians across the board suffered because of the undemocratic nature of the system of rule throughout the centuries, but, we can safely single out the severity of the oppression women had to endure in a male dominated society. In a similar fashion, it is not that difficult to observe what Ethiopian Muslims had to go through in their own homeland. My contention with Mr. Shewakena is that we cannot just gloss over the nature of the oppression and paint everyone with the same brush and declare that we all suffered equally. Although I really understand the positive message that he wants to pass to the Muslims, it needs to be pointed out that there are some real issues that we are trying to straighten with our Christian counterparts so that we can bring real peace, equality and fairness to all our lives.


I share Mr. Shewakena’s view that unless a real democratic government is established in our country, we will never be free and equal. And, of course, Ethiopian Muslims repeatedly condemned the actions of the government during the 2005 election that ended up claiming more that two hundred lives and the sufferings of many others. And we are well aware of the magnitude of the government’s interference in the Muslim’s Council to the point that it became its own apparatus to effectively control our actions. We have seen governments come and go and we have learned a thing or two on how each one tries to change its tactics to control us so that we become docile and obedient. We have known the role of government in our lives for some time now and we are learning how to fight the ever changing nature of the oppression, but we have become more aware of the second force that is trying to hold us back in our just struggle to achieve our proper place in the nation. Let me jot down a few examples of this force to give you some idea of what we are dealing with.


• The way it is established, the Ethiopian Muslims Supreme Council is no better that any other non-governmental entity because it is required to renew its operating license every two years from non-other than the World Council of Churches. You might argue that the government might have its hand on this but what about the role of the church? For an organization that was supposed to represent more than half the population, what kind of arrangement is that either by the government or the church? Even thought we have voiced our grievances as to the unfairness of this issue many times with the authorities, we raised it again during the DC demonstration to tell our story to everyone. The church is helping the government to contain the struggle of the Muslims and both of them have found an area of common interest that they see eye to eye. Mr. Shewakena, we are demanding the respect of our rights both from the government as we as the church because the lines are too blurry for us to tell the difference.
• Yes, we have seen the establishment of many mosques across the nation since the time of the dergue but most of the time the process of getting permit and building mosques in Ethiopia is a challenge all by itself. In mixed neighborhoods of Muslims and Christians, most of the time permits for building are routinely denied and it has become a custom to go through the courts. The church plays a leading role at every level of local government to enforce the denial of permits.

• Muslims students are denied their basic rights of worship (praying) in higher institutions of learning by non-other than those who area administering the colleges. Most of these authorities make no apologies for their discriminatory acts by falsely trying to hide under the constitution. What kind of constitution denies the basic rights of an individual? And we all know that a higher learning institution, let alone deny ones’ fundamental rights, is a place to experiment new ideas without regard to the actions of the government. It just happens that most of the intelligentsia in these higher institutions belong to institution called Mahbere Kudusan which is strongly affiliated with the church.

• Right now, there is an air of hostility among the followers of the two major religions as a result of destructive policies followed by both the government and the church. Finally, it came into the open and in some areas, Muslims are told to get out of the country because some believe they have overstayed their welcome. I wish it would have been easy to dismiss these and threats as a work of a lunatic fringe group. But, Mr. Shewakena, major social catastrophes are hardly noticed during the inception and once they get momentum, it is difficult to stop, and if so, at a terrible price both in human lives and property as well.


Mr. Shewkena, these and many similar examples are the reason we wanted to take our struggle in the open and let everyone know what we are dealing with. Although I wan not a part of the body that organized the DC event to speak on their behalf, I can tell you that a call was made for all Ethiopian to join their hands in a show of solidarity. Unfortunately, I learned that very few members of the Christian community participated, perhaps, they were not properly informed of our message.


Mr. Shewakena, we are all in agreement that the Ethiopian Muslims have a lot in common with their Christian counterparts and they have to bring their collective effort together to bring a lasting peace, freedom and equality to all the people. But somehow along our struggle, it seems to me that we are parting in different directions because we failed to see each others’ particular problems and concerns. We have been voicing our concern in the open for some time now but we are not hearing anything from democratic minded elements within the larger Ethiopian community. The peace loving Ethiopian Christian community has to raise its voice against the extreme elements and try to extinguish the hate propaganda that is spoiling the friendship and respectful relationship that has existed for centuries.


Surat S.