Those rogue Methodist clerics are stirring up their flocks to warfare again. What's that? A Muslim cleric, who despite his close study of Islam doesn't seem to realize that the Qur'an counsels only peace and nonviolence? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe?
From AP, with thanks to Warren:
MOGADISHU, Somalia - A leading Islamic cleric called on Somalis to prepare to fight Ethiopian troops believed to have entered into Somalia, where Islamic militias now control a significant portion of the country."Ethiopians have been illegally crossing our border since earlier last month and now they are in some parts of our territory but, God willing, they will regret," Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said Sunday. He urged Somalis to come together and confront Ethiopia, describing the country as "the enemy number one of the Somali people."
Several residents in the border town of Beled-Hawo said about 100 troops from Ethiopia had crossed into their town Saturday. Ahmed, who chairs the executive council of the Islamists who with their allies control most of southern Somalia, said Ethiopian troops had also in recent weeks entered Somalia's southwestern region of Gedo and the central region of Hiraan.
Ethiopia has not responded to the allegations, but it has denied in the past sending troops into Somalia.
The president of Somalia's secular interim government, Abdullahi Yusuf, is allied with Ethiopia and has asked for its support. Ethiopia has intervened in Somalia in the past to prevent Islamic extremists from taking power.
Call for Papers:
Conference on Ethiopia, the West, and Islam
Topics will include:
1. The special dispensation granted Ethiopia in Islam because of the refuge given to 82 (or 84, or 86) early Muslims in the time of Muhammad
2. Europe and the Dream of a Christian Kingdom on the other side of the threatening Muslims. when did the Kingdom of Prester John pass, as an imaginary construct in the collective mind of threatened Western Christendom, from "India" to "Ethiopia"
3. Abyssinia in the Western literary imagination:
a) Johnson's translation of Father Lobo, Rasselas.
b) Pushkin: The Moor of Peter the Great (Arap Petra Velikovo).
4. Haile Selassie and Anti-Fascism: Adowa, the appearance at the League of Nations, Ras Tafari and Rastafarianism.
5. Ethiopia today and the end of the special dispensation: Da'wa and demographic conquest
6. The Jihad in Southern Sudan, Egypt's Undeclared War on Ethiopia, and the islamization of East Africa.
Conference will be held in the Palace of African Nations, Addis Ababa, on February 6-13, 2007.
In case of rain, or for any other reason, the conference will be held in the privacy of your own brain. In the latter case, refreshments will not be served.
Oh Hugh, you make me weep that such interest and concern for Ethiopia is but a dream.
What can be done to save Ethiopia? Will America step in to support a land of black africans with no gold or oil, who's only resource is history, culture, and incredible long-distance runners?
Hugh-
Interesting that Rastafarianism comes up, because of Mohammad's Bukhari Hadith 2;26;666-667 "prophecy" about the "skinny-legged black man from Ethiopia destroying the Ka'aba stone by stone" .
I would guess that the happy-go-lucky, ganja (stoned) and reggae (rockin')-loving Rastas might be the secret answer to undermining Islam. ( At least in the paranoic conspiratorial murk of the victimological Muslim mind.)
I'll take Bob Marley's lilting "Lion of Zion" over the 5 times a day Muslim muezzin caterwauling any day.
Any century.
Or any millennium.
Dredlocks versus Headlocks?
The word "Rastafarian" has given birth to a brilliant neologistm -- "Trustafarian" -- for a young inheritor of a Trust Fund, with a hint at the sometime ostentatious earnestness of those beneficiaries of money the source of which does not always bear looking into, but that has been laundered through time rather than space, which is how los medicos de Medellin prefer to do it. The word also hints at those who, by supporting this or that odd way of doing good (such as a Clivus Multrum in every home) they justify their ways, and that Trust Fund, not so much to God (who he?), but to themselves and possibly, their psychiatrists.
People in this world have got to stop looking to the United States for constant aid and soldiery.
How many of them understand the birth of the United States? Probably close to 1%.
We have fought some of the bloodiest wars in history to forge this young Republic. Hardly any aid was asked for or given to us. The merit of the American is not something so easily cloned, I must not perceive, and this causes no end of hardships around the globe, but we are not by this merit responsible for policing the planet either. We have our own problems, tenfold today then we had just 20 years ago. What any country like Somalia can best hope for right now is that by some stroke of luck we find a self-interest for growing cause against Islam in the United States that ultimately forces our hand in Africa. But I somehow do not believe we can make that continent a priority.
The bleeding hearts would love to wash Africa with American tax money, but I'm not blind to the internal problems that constantly make such attempts close to futile. Africans must fight for Africa. Europe must fight for Europe. Russia must fight for Russia.
And damnit -- the United States had better start fighting for the United States, or everything is going to go down the drain faster than you can say "lickety-split"!! The majority in the boldest nations and our best allies understand this inheritantly (i.e. Britain, Australia, Japan, Germany), for if we go down, so go the rest.
"Ethiopians have been illegally crossing our border"
this looks like "projection". The Somalis accuse their opponent of what they thenselves are planning. This is a justification and (indirectly) a warning shot.