From “Ahbash” to “Fetullah Gullen Movement”???

By Ubah Abdusalam Seid

On Tuesday (May 29/2012), Dr Shiferaw Teklemariam started another game. He brought a preacher from a movement founded by a Turkish-American scholar called Fetullah Gullen and made him to brainwash many “scholars”. (Read the article from Reporter Newspaper http://www.ethiopianreporter.com/politics/295-politics/6506-2012-05-30-06-33-01.html )
I heard about the man called “Fetullah Gullen” only recently (in January 2012). Some people guess that the movement is related to Ahbash faction. And it is too difficult to make deduction about him in this short time. But I know three things which will make us suspicious about him.
1.    He lives in Philadelphia, USA. The North American headquarter of “Ahbash” movement (AICP) is also located in Philadelphia. Further, Ahbash becomes a member of a coalition formed by the Philadelphia branch of Anti-Defamation League (one of the strongest Zionist movements in the world).
2.     The workshop undertaken at ECA on Tuesday was sponsored by three organizations. One of those organizations called “Nejashi Ethio-Turkish School” is owned by members of Ahbash faction (they are Ethiopian).
3.    Few websites also hint that the man called “Fetullah Gullen” may be a member of CIA.
Nine months ago I wrote an article about the “Turks and Wahhabiya”. And I described that the Turks bring many books to our country and distribute them freely. As I read some of the books, few are quite interesting (for example the books written by an author called “Osman Nuri Topbash” are very nice). I also hinted that the Turkish books don’t present heretical views directly as “Ahbash” books do. For example the Turkish books have very favorite view of Hadrat Mo’awiyya bin Abi Sufiyan- r.a. They also don’t say “Asking Forgiveness of Allah for all Muslims will make you Kafir” as we read in Ahbash books.
However, in their hostility against “Wahhabiyya”, the Turkish books are the same to Ahbash books. They curse scholars like Sheikhul-Islam Ibn Teymiyyah, Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab, Sayyid Jamaluddin Al-Afghani, Ustaz Sayyid Qutb and Sayyid Abul-A’ila Mawdudi. The Turkish books I say definitely believe that “Wahhabism is a cult created by a British Spy called Mr. Hempher.
So why did they brought the Turkish group now? Why didn’t they try to bring scholars from Al-Azhar University or Medina Islamic University? Why didn’t they try to bring Malysian and Indonesian scholars who follow the “Shafi’I” mazhab as most of Ethiopians do? We have many questions.
Finally, I think Dr. Shiferaw did a “good” research this time. He may have learned that Ahbash has few followers (only half a million). That might be a reason to bring another brand of Islam followed by few millions. However, our message is clear. Our struggle is to stop the forceful indoctrination of any cult in the pretext of fighting extremism. We won’t allow the government or anybody to say “follow this brand of Islam that we brought from Beirut and Turkey”. As long as the government authorities don’t stop terrorizing our people by quoting the nightmare of “Wahhabiyya”, we won’t stop our struggle.
Victory is for Islam