Islam and Ethiopia

I just finished a course at Luther Seminary called “Islam in the Modern World”. The class required a research paper, for which I wrote about the first hijra of Mohammed’s followers to Abyssinia. Notice that Wikipedia provides very little information on this. In fact, you have do a lot of digging to find anything on the subject.   I argued that this event should provide a paradigm for peace between Christians and Muslims in Ethiopia and beyond.  It also occurred prior to the political dominance of Mohammed and his followers in Medina and so shows an early example of minority Muslim living.

I find this existentially important as I’m traveling to Addis Ababa in a couple of days.  The Somali Courts declared war on Ethiopia a while back; however, Ethiopia only recently began to fight against the Islamic Courts.  Looks like the U.N. approved a peacekeeping force, but has waited 3 weeks to deploy it.  The African Union was in support of Ethiopia’s actions as of a couple of days ago, but now they’re telling them to leave.

So, I called my airline and they said that nothing has changed and that my flight is still scheduled to leave on time.