It’s Time to Launch on the “Full Scale Effort”

Dear my brothers and sisters in Islam;

I understand that most of you are familiar with the problem happened to the Ethiopian Muslims. And we were doing our parts to solve the problem. But the lattes development we see in this week clearly show that our efforts are insufficient to eradicate the problem. Even some cases testify that what we did altogether was beating about the bush rather than trying to minimize the intensity of the tensions emanating from that very problem. If we continue on this path, I do feel that we wouldn’t achieve the presumed target.

Therefore, we must transform our little trials to a full scale effort which would bring us the best fruits (In the help of Allah). Unless we realize this fact, then our trouble wouldn’t be eradicated. The “full scale effort” must come to the top of all agenda. We should make all of our personal and group trials to be parts of “the full scale effort”. The awareness creating activities which we are undertaking mostly through our facebook groups and newspapers are good, but they can have limited outputs. We can achieve our real demands only through “full scale effort”.

So what would constitute this “full scale effort”? According to my thought, it should have the following components.

I.        Activities we do within the Muslim Ummah

1.      Awareness creating on the deviances and heretical teachings of Ahbash.

We should increase the awareness creating activities through out the whole of the country by expanding its modes which include

a)      Internet: -expand the magnitude from the facebook groups to other social networking sites, bloggers, websites, etc…

b)      Publication and distribution of pamphlets and brochures

c)      Publication and distribution of books

d)      Using the Muslims newspapers and magazines

e)      Discussions in “masjid” and our neighborhood jama’a

f)       Others….

2.      Bringing distinguished personalities to the effort. For example, we should reach distinguished personalities of the following sorts

a)      Well respected Ulama, writers and Da’is

b)      Well-known persons in the business community

c)      Well-known Muslim activists and humanitarians

d)      Other well-known Ethiopian Muslims (for example, Muslim athletes, footballers, journalists, travelers etc… )

3.      Reaching all Muslims Ethiopian individuals and groups in Diaspora and making them to play their role in our cause.

4.      Bringing all active da’wa groups and study circles, under the same objective

5.      Reaching the traditional Muslim social institutions (called “idir” in Amharic) and making them to have their part (if it is possible).

II.      Appealing to all concerned bodies

1.      Appealing to the prime minister of the federal government of Ethiopia.

a)      Writing a formal letter to the prime minister

b)      Collecting petitions and submitting to the prime minister office

c)      Collecting online petitions and submitting to the prime minister office

2.      Appealing to the Ministry of Federal Affairs Ethiopia

3.      Appealing to the State Department of the United State ( because many people speculated that it was the wrong assumptions made by the USA and the policy advice it gave to the government of Ethiopia that allowed “Al-Ahbash” to have a power on the Council of Islamic Affairs. The cables we read on wikileaks site supports this hypothesis).

4.      Notifying the nine regional governments and the two city councils of the truths of our problems.

III.    Exposing our case to other Ethiopians, the media and human right advocators.

1.      Exposing our case to non-Muslim Ethiopians and telling them the reality of our case

2.      Exposing our case to the local private media

3.      Exposing our case to the international media

4.      Exposing our case to domestic human rights organizations such as

a)      The Ethiopian Human Rights commission (a government organization)

b)      The Ethiopian Human Rights council (non-governmental)

I proposed these measures to be undertaken as soon as possible. We must start to discuss them from now onwards.

Finally, I want to say that

1.      We will discuss the ways to apply those activities

2.      We will proceed to other steps after we see the out comes of these measures.

3.      We seek to achieve our demand through legal and non-violent ways.

4.      We rely on ourselves. For the time being, we allow only Ethiopian and Ethiopian-born Muslims to have direct participation in the struggle. But we will accept the assistants of other nationals, governments and organizations according to the legal grounds of Ethiopia.

5.      In any case, we must show the concerned bodies that we are reflecting the feeling of the majority (not the minority as “Ahbash” is).

6.      We will show all parties that the Ethiopian Muslims are non extremist, non-violent good citizens who were brought up through excellent Islamic ethics.

May Allah Help Us. Amiin!!