Revolutionary Islam and Regime Change in Ethiopia

Anti-TPLF  Muslim protesters in Addis Ababa

Revolutionary Islam and Regime Change in Ethiopia

By Thomas Mountain 

With ethnic uprisings spreading across an Ethiopia now ruled by martial law there is only one nationally based organization in place to lead the eventual regime change in the country and that is the revolutionary Islamic movement.

Presently all the liberation resistance movements in Ethiopia are ethnically based with their senior leadership in exile, mainly in neighboring Eritrea. The only organization with a national presence is the revolutionary Islamic religious community, whose recently freed leaders have sworn to liberate Ethiopia from the western backed Tigrayan ethnic minority regime presently ruling the country.

The revolutionary Islamic community in Ethiopia has a nation wide network of mosques and religious schools, with very respected locally based leaders and can provide the only legal point of assembly in the country.

Just as in the Iranian revolution in the late 1970’s where the only place revolutionaries could gather without being attacked by the police is the mosques, especially for large gatherings for Friday Prayers, the Islamic community in Ethiopia can provide the only place for the opposition to meet especially now that any and all gatherings are banned under Martial Law and the State of Emergency.

The regimes Agazi death squads have shoot to kill orders and the only place of safety for meetings is in the mosques, though how long the regime will tolerate this is not certain.

Having attacked the Islamic community four years ago, gunning down many and locking up the recently released leadership, the Ethiopia regime may be planning on cracking down on Muslims in a new wave of terror.

The maxim is oppression breeds resistance and even the Washington Post’s Editorial Board knows this, having pointed out how martial law and an iron fist will only lead to further protests and the eventual explosion that will drive the regime into exile and leave Ethiopia without any leadership.

The ensuing power vacuum could see the revolutionary Islamic community taking leadership and bringing unity to Ethiopia, for even if the country is divided along ethnic lines all Muslims no matter what tribe worship together in their mosques.

Most Ethiopians are muslims and their religious practices for centuries past forbid them from discriminating by ethnicity when it comes to their worship. The very idea is foreign to the country.

And Ethiopia’s Muslims practice a very tolerant Sunni variant and have lived side by side with their Christian brothers and sisters for over a millennia, sitting together to break bread and even intermarrying. Thank god the Wahhabi virus has not yet taken root in the country.

Even the CIA via its execrable media front Freedom House a few months ago insinuated that regime change maybe necessary in Ethiopia and with the recent massacres and growing protests matters may come to a head more quickly than expected. It maybe sooner rather than later that revolutionary Islam finds itself leading regime change in Ethiopia.

Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist in Eritrea, living and reporting from here since 2006. His speeches, interviews and articles can be found on Facebook at thomascmountain and he can best be reached at thomascmountain at g mail dot com

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