When Muhammad’s wife and followers came to Ethiopia as refugees, they were welcomed and protected by Christian Ethiopia. Allegedly, Muhammad had told his followers to leave for Ethiopia, where “a king rules without injustice, a land of truthfulness-until God leads us to a way out of our difficulty.” (Wikipedia) Their welcome was not conditioned on having to have the same beliefs, but instead, they were embraced as fellow human beings and shown such great hospitality and care that Muhammad instructed his followers to never declare Jihad against Ethiopia.
Now, we must be thankful for the mostly peaceful and harmonious relationships that exist today between Muslims, Christians and Jews in Ethiopia, perhaps partly because of the humane and respectful relationship between these early Christians and Muslims, who accepted each other regardless of differences of background, language and faith. This is unique in this world and something worth saving from our past.
In fact, this is an attribute about us that we can share with others so we must consider how can we continue to uphold this wonderful legacy passed on to us by the early Ethiopian Christians and Muhammad and his followers? In other words, our day-to-day attitudes and actions to those around us must reflect the basic truth that we are all equal and valuable as children created in God’s image. This must be reflected in every area of our society if we are to flourish.
For instance, do we as a society and as individuals look down at the beggars, prostitutes and children of the streets as you pass them by or do you see them as equal to you, perhaps needing an opportunity and help to rise above their plight? We know the vast majority of our country’s poor are not poor due to laziness. Ethiopians are hard-working people who want a future for themselves and for their children.
Why is it that there are so many university-educated beggars asking for money in English? Instead, many at the top of our society, want ethnic, economic or political dominance at the expense of others. Life is much more than this and some day we will be held responsible for how we treated those with less in our society when we could do much more. These are those who sit in their mansions, houses and huts with the doors closed to their family members and neighbors as well as to those who cooked the food, while they eat an entire chicken themselves.
We need to tell these elites next time you are sitting down to eat, invite your housemaid to eat with you and send some leftovers home with her for her family. Take practical action. Do the same to your bodyguard or the young girl doing your laundry who makes only 100 birr a month for doing the laundry of ten families. She works like a slave in our society. Invite her or others to share a drink of cool refreshment or a cup of hot Ethiopian coffee with lots of sugar. We as the family of Ethiopia cannot shut the doors of our homes to the poor, underprivileged, the oppressed and the neglected. Just like it is hard to build a home with no tools, it is hard for them to build a life in this society without basic opportunities. Many of us could do much more to help them.
This could create an unbelievable revolution in our country that would tear down the walls held up by ethnic hatred, cronyism, prejudice, arrogance, selfishness, fear, ignorance and moral flabbiness. This is not about politics. It is much bigger than politics, which is too frequently about personal ambition or advancing goals for one’s own family, friends and ethnic group. Instead, I appeal to you to take action in giving hope to this dying country, dying because of the inaction of so many of us. Take a little of your time and resources to make a difference in one person’s life who is outside your immediate circle.
Life is short and we have multiple opportunities to fill up the empty vessel of our lives with things that will fulfill all our authentic needs. Remember, we are only refugees on this earth, seeking for a homeland for eternity where we will totally be complete. We, therefore, should choose the correct path now or we will never find that place of satisfaction and rest.
People think they can control their futures, but there are countless, daily examples of how we cannot do so and our deadline comes before we are ready to face it and then we have eternal consequences that we will not like. Instead, before it comes, we need to build bridges and roads beyond our own huts and villages—beyond our tribes, regions, ethnicity, sex, education, economic levels and religion.
Some may think this is just wishful thinking, but it can be done much better than we are doing it today. One way to do this is to rekindle our fear of a holy God who will judge us if we refuse Him by going our own way. But if we repent, He will show us the path to Him and those around us will benefit as we live out our faith in good deeds.
There are many Ethiopians who have died in the last few years, months and days of hardship and killing who have not made it to celebrate the Third Ethiopian Millennium. In honor of these worthy Ethiopians and those to come, let us claim the best of our past and combine it with the best of Ethiopia now so that those Ethiopians in the future will have reason to thank us.
As we face many hundreds of separate groups within Ethiopia, all with their own agendas, let us not discount the reason for their formation. They came together for a reason and if we refuse to listen, we will miss the messages for the next millennium that may bring peace, harmony and well being to our nation.
If we refuse to listen, we will only increase our alienation, yet, we cannot force everyone to believe the same or to listen to our stories. If that is the case, let those go their own way, but I am confident that many Ethiopians will get it. Ethiopia is changing and those changes are painful…