Islam in Ethiopia

Mosque in Harar

Islam is the most widely practiced religion in Ethiopia (source: CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/et.html), having arrived in Ethiopia in 615. During that year, the Muhammad's followers sought refuge in the Ethiopian Kingdom of Aksum, possibly settling at Negash.

File:Ethiopia museum old koran.jpg

An ancient Ethiopian Islamic manuscript.

They were fleeing from Mecca's new leading tribe, the reactionary Quraysh, who sent emissaries to bring them back to Arabia, but the King of Ethiopia protected the Prophet and his followers. The Prophet himself instructed his followers who came to Ethiopia, to respect and protect Ethiopia as well as live in peace with Ethiopian Christians. However, it would be the city of Medina, north of Mecca, that was ultimately decided to be the new home of the exiles from Mecca.

Under the former Emperor Haile Selassie, Muslim communities could bring matters of Personal and Family Law and inheritance before Islamic courts; many did so and probably continued to do so under the revolutionary regime. However, many Muslims dealt with such matters in terms of Customary Law. For example, the Somali and other pastoralists tended not to follow the requirement that daughters inherit half as much property as sons, particularly when livestock was at issue. In parts of Eritrea, the tendency to treat land as the corporate property of a descent group (lineage or clan) precluded following the Islamic principle of division of property among one's heirs.

Much as the rest of the Muslim world, the beliefs and practices of the Muslims of Ethiopia are basically the same: embodied in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. There are also Sufi Orders present in Ethiopia. According to the 1994 census of Ethiopia (with similar numbers for the 1984 census), about one third of Ethiopia's population are adherents of Islam and members of the Muslim community can be found throughout the country, though they are most concentrated in the lowlands. The most important Islamic religious practices, such as the daily ritual prayers (Salat) and Fasting (Arabic صوم, Sawm, Ethiopic ጾም, S.om or Tsom - used by Christians as well) during the holy month of Ramadan, are observed both in urban centers as well as in rural areas, among both settled peoples and nomads. Numerous Ethiopian Muslims perform the pilgrimage to Mecca every year.

In Ethiopia's Muslim communities, as in neighboring Sudan and Somalia, the faithful are associated with, but not necessarily members of any specific Sufi Order. Nevertheless, formal and informal attachment to Sufi practices is widespread, the emphasis seems less on the contemplative and disciplined mysticism and more on the concentration of the spiritual powers possessed by certain founders of the Orders and the Masters of the local branches of the respective Orders. Some developed the idea that these special persons possess extraordinary spiritual power to intercede with God and have the ability to promote the fertility of women and cure illnesses. In many cases, these individuals are recognized as saints. People visit their tombs to pray for their help or their intercession with God. perhaps the best-known example being Sheikh Hussein. However, these practices of worshipping at graves are explicitly forbidden in Islam, as they constitute "shirk", or ascribing partners to the One True God. And the evidence for this is in the authentic hadith collected by the most famous compiler and hadith scholar Imam Al Bukhari: No. 428 - Narrated 'Aisha and 'Abdullah bin 'Abbas: When the last moment of the life of Allah's Apostle came he started putting his 'Khamisa' on his face and when he felt hot and short of breath he took it off his face and said, "May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their Prophets." The Prophet was warning (Muslims) of what those had done.

See also

• Islam by country
• Sheikh Hussein

References

• This image is available from the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division under the digital ID {{{id}}}
  This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Wikipedia:Copyrights for more information.
• J. Spencer Trimingham. Islam in Ethiopia. Oxford: Geoffrey Cumberlege for the University Press, 1952.

External links

• Ethiopian Muslim and Christian War
• sahihalbukhari.com