Article 27 of the TPLF-imposed constitution stipulates a secular Ethiopian state; it permits freedoms of conscience, expression, association, and religion among others in conformity with United Nations Declaration on Universal Human Rights. It is therefore discriminatory and wrong for the PM taking advantage of his political position to allow members of his Pentecostal church to hold mass at the Palace built at the expense of the Ethiopian people to run their national affairs.
It is to be recalled that Ethiopian leaders in the past worshipped in churches in sharp contrast to the venue in Menilik Palace deliberately chosen by Prime Minister (PM) Hailemariam Desalegn partly to sow discord among Ethiopians and partly to be build his power base. This constitutes utter lack of sensitivity to the 90 million multicultural citizens of Ethiopia of various creeds that the PM is supposed to represent impartially. Is the PM fit to rule?
The stance of the PM carries a double-edged sword, division along ethnic and religious lines both leading to internecine carnage. This is the demonic legacy of the late tyrant Meles Zenawi that the PM has publicly vowed to perpetuate intact.
Followers of Orthodox Tewahedo Christians and Muslim faiths constitute 77% of the Ethiopian people; the latter have shown determined and sustained demand for the respect of their right to elect their leaders freely at Mosques without government interference as stipulated in the constitution standing bravely for their right for over a year. Tewahedo Christians should match the bravery of their Muslim citizens and forge unity to force the brutal EPRDF regime to respect its own constitution.
Unfortunately the Holy Synod in Addis Ababa is in leadership crisis and is therefore impotent to rally Christians and demand government involvement in religious such as forcefully spearheading the replacement process for the late illegitimate Patriarch Aba Paulos. This pathetic situation has to change by the demand of the faithful in Addis Ababa noting that the proportion of the followers of the Orthodox faith has fallen from 60% to 45% in the last 21 years owing to the split of the Holy Synod.
Need for Ethiopian secular state
The Muslim Brotherhood is accused of hijacking the Egyptian revolution of the people, opposition political parties, and activists for change to a democratic dispensation. Egyptians are back in their hundreds of thousands to Tahrir Square in Cairo and other major cities in protest. Leaders in the opposition are calling on President Morsi for a dialogue aimed at establishing a national unity government in order to check popular unrest, stabilize the country, and taste the fruit of the revolution in a secular democratic state. President Morsi is in deep political trouble owing to economic decline and social unrest.
Ethiopian Christians and Muslims should enter into covenant to struggle for a secular democratic state in which freedom of conscience is inviolable. In doing so they are advised to take into consideration the current Egyptian predicament and the following narration on religion and ideology.
1. By visiting Google readers will, in an article posted by
Scott From South Cackalacky dated
10/17/2009, find that “Christianity and Religion Have Caused More Deaths Than Anything Else in History”. The author argues on the basis of the Holy Bible and history that “Religion and ideology are secondary causes of war and the primary cause of war is sin”, vide:-
- “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures”,
James 4:1-3
- “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander”, (Matthew 15:19).
- “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
- “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5)
2. By visiting Google under the title “Is religion the cause of most wars?” readers will find the argument that the primary cause of war is “our wicked hearts; religion and ideology are simply the means through which we exercise the wickedness in our hearts.” It is further stressed that “… true religion keeps fallen humanity in check; without it, wickedness and sin would reign supreme.”
Historical tells us that non-Christian wars caused the death of 90 million compared to 6 million deaths attributed to Christian wars, vide:-
“By all accounts, the 20th century was one of the bloodiest centuries in human history. Two major world wars, which had nothing at all to do with religion, the Jewish Holocaust, and the Communist Revolutions in Russia, China, Southeast Asia and Cuba, have accounted for anywhere between 50-70 million deaths (some estimate upwards to 100 million). The one thing these conflicts and genocides have in common is that fact that they were ideological, not religious, in nature. We could easily make the case that more people have died throughout human history due to ideology than to religion. Communist ideology necessitates ruling over others. Nazi ideology necessitates elimination of “inferior” races. These two ideologies alone account for the death of millions, and religion had nothing to do with it. In fact, communism is by definition an atheistic ideology.”
Since the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974
