Seven Questions on Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Pentecostalism for Dr. Terje Østebø

"He thinks that he is called to be Ethiopia’s savior."

Professor Terje Østebø of the University of Florida has done groundbreaking work on religion, politics, and conflict in Ethiopia. His work includes his books Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia (Brill, 2011), which had a huge impact on my own thinking about the Salafi movement, and Islam, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Ethiopia: The Bale Insurgency, 1963-1970 (Cambridge, 2020). His work recently caught my eye again - his new article “The Religion of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed: Pentecostalism, Prosperity Gospel and the Power of Positive Thinking” offers a compelling look at one of the most powerful leaders in Africa. We caught up recently for an interview about Abiy and more.

AT: In your article on Abiy Ahmed and in other writings, you’ve pointed to 1991 as a key turning point in Ethiopia’s religious history. Can you tell us about how the liberalization of religious space under the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front contributed to the growth of religious reform and revitalization movements in Ethiopia?

TØ: It was a marked break with military rule, the Derg, because they had a very restrictive policy on religious expression – classical Marxist beliefs and so on. It did loosen up a little bit towards the late 1980s, but the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) dramatically reversed all restrictions, at least in the in the very beginning. For the Muslim community and the Protestant community in particular, the access to the broader world – in terms of being able to travel and receive ideas, missionaries coming in, and so forth – made a huge impact. Gradually, the EPRDF were caught off guard in a way: they had the same kind of Marxist heritage as the Derg, believing that religion eventually would go away, but it didn’t. Suddenly people were flocking to churches and mosques, and really moving back to religion. 1991 was just this dramatic shift from, and I think a lot of people felt, “Where do we go now?” Suddenly there was this unprecedented future. For some people, the draw became religion, for others it became ethnicity, if you were looking for something.

The government increasingly started to monitor and coopt religious communities, particularly the Muslim community, because “extremism” and “radicalization” became the buzzwords of the world. To some extent, they also coopted the Orthodox church. No one was beyond cooptation, but it was less visible among the Protestants. So you had kind of a strange situation: you had the secular state, as was very clearly expressed in the constitution, and government officials were very careful not to have any references to religion in any of the public and political rhetoric and speeches. And then they had this fear of the “Muslim danger” breeching the constitutional principle of secularism. But with Protestants, they didn’t care – they felt that Protestants were just doing their thing and were very apolitical in the sense of staying out of any kind of engagement with political hierarchies. They were under the radar in developing. In the 1994 census, Protestants were around 10%; and then in 2007, the last census, it was 18%, so that’s a dramatic increase. And that was the only thing that made the government take note of them – the growth. But I don’t think any officials really cared about it. So there was a political compartmentalization of this community that was socially very visible, with loudspeakers, and speaking in tongues, large revival conferences, healing meetings, etc.

AT: You write that “Abiy is convinced that he is Godsent and divinely chosen to lead” (p. 72). How does he square his messianic self-understanding with the rhetoric of religious inclusivity that you highlight elsewhere in the article?

TØ: He’s not your typical Pentecostal. His message is a national message – he’s not there to convert people, he’s not a pastor. He’s more a messianic figure promising to bring the nation towards prosperity. He thinks that he is called to be Ethiopia’s savior. But we know so little. There’s no journalist that has ever interviewed him. There’s no one who speaks to him in a way that’s not scripted. So we don’t really know what’s going on inside his head. We can only see some bits and pieces from his speeches. But I talked to people who were close to him and they talked about him having nightly prayer meetings and saw him coming to work the next day red-eyed. I think his Pentecostal faith is important for him not in the sense of a typical Pentecostal preacher, to “save” individuals, but to “save” Ethiopia. He draws from this particular faith and argues that “if we pray for Ethiopia, if we work for Ethiopia, then Ethiopia is going to be prosperous.” In contrast to Zambian President Frederick Chiluba’s pursuit of a “Christian Zambia,” Abiy’s vision is more inclusive.

AT: In one quote from Abiy that you include in your article, he says, “The constitution says church and state should be separated, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t work together” (p. 70). What do you think he means?

TØ: On the one hand, he seems to feel that it’s not wrong to draw inspiration from a Christian source and apply that to the political work that you’re doing, to be inspired and to find faith and strength. But I also think that he would like to see ethical people engage in political work and everything and in that way make Ethiopia prosper. I think the whole thing for him is that he’s a very nationalist leader, and it’s all about the country’s well-being. I don’t think he has an agenda to populate the government with Pentecostals against Muslims and the Orthodox. He wants various citizens and institutions to contribute, to work with him, but he’s the guy in the driver’s seat, drawing support from others.

AT: Another set of striking quotations you include from Abiy has to do with the war in Tigray; you note that he compared Ethiopia’s difficulties to Christ’s trials, and that he declared himself to have won a divinely backed victory there. How does that kind of rhetoric land in Tigray? Which segments of the Ethiopian population respond positively to that framing, and which segments recoil from it?

TØ: The people of Tigray were probably just shaking their heads at this. On the other hand, they would say, “Oh my God, this guy is after us. He’s making this war into something more than we did.” In Abiy’s framing it becomes something between good and evil. Both he and his advisers use this language. “TPLF is like cancer.” “TPLF is like weed that needs to be removed.” It was very provocative message. You can’t believe the level of evil they ascribed to TPLF (the Tigray People’s Liberation Front).

During the war, they had the Amhara on their side, and they were rallying to that, and the people of Addis Ababa. When I came back after the war, in Addis, you would see these bumper stickers – there was this “No More” campaign, and “African solutions for African problems.” But the minute you drove outside the city, like in Oromia, nothing, not a single one of these bumper stickers at all. So for the larger population, like non-Amhara in the south, people were more distanced and less supportive of Abiy. In 1999-2000, I lived there in the south during the previous Eritrean war and in the rural areas, people hardly spoke about the war.

I think Abiy’s rhetoric appealed to Addis Ababa, it appealed to Amhara, to “Ethiopianists,” and it also appealed to all those who have suffered under TPLF rule.

And when you listen now to his rhetoric about access to the sea, it’s framed as “this is about our existence, our rights, about survival or no survival.” We’re all waiting for the war to start and I’m pretty sure that we’re going to see some of the same messianic rhetoric.

AT: Your work more broadly has often dealt with how labels and perceptions of “extremism” and “terrorism” have functioned in Ethiopia. How has Abiy approached those labels and their legal and political ramifications?

TØ: It’s an interesting thing: he doesn’t speak about that. Now, it’s the ethnic card dominating everything, including with Eritrea. And he talks about “enemies” – that’s the word he uses. Internal and external “enemies,” and he sometimes lists them. And of course Eritrea is one. He also uses terms that have been invoked for decades – “anti-peace forces” and “anti-development forces,” the same phrases that the Derg used. But “extremism” doesn’t appear much, as far as I know.

The fact that the Salafis entered and got a seat at the table is interesting. All those that were considered by the EPDRF as a threat are now considered the good guys – and that’s interesting. The old Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council (EIASC) was previously a target of protests, and the government-led elections of a new council in 2012 had not solved the issue. Abiy created a committee tasked with reforming the EIASC, as well as with articulating a unifying theological position for Ethiopian Muslims. But that hit a roadblock, and rival camps labeled each other “Salafis” and “Sufis” – which can be somewhat misleading. Ordinary Ethiopian Muslims don’t really refer to themselves as Sufis. And “Salafism” is difficult to nearly demarcate in the Ethiopian context. Then there was a “national conference” in Addis Ababa in May 2019, which Abiy himself attended, and a leader from the “Sufi” faction was elected president, with a “Salafi” faction leader as vice president. But the “Sufi” faction and the “Salafi” faction never reconciled, even amid government appeals, and the “Sufi” faction even boycotted Abiy’s follow-up national conference in 2022. The 2022 conference elected a new transitional council, this time with a Salafi as president and a Sufi as vice president. The “Sufis,” who previously were pictured as tolerant and inclusive, became labelled as uncooperative and intolerant – and consequently sidelined. They pushed back by decrying a “Salafi takeover” and what they see as domination by the Oromo. Meanwhile, the Salafis’ involvement in the EIASC leadership made them less exclusivist and positioned them as representatives of the Ethiopian Muslim community vis-à-vis the larger Ethiopian society.

Overall, Abiy just has a different attitude towards religious figures than his predecessors did – he didn’t come in with a preconception that Salafis or others were extremists. He sees them as people he can work with. The overarching thing for him is to mend divisions. They did the same thing with the Orthodox Church, and created a new evangelical council, and also wanted to mend the divisions within the Muslim community. In fact the Sufis were the ones who backed out of Abiy’s proposed council, which created a vacuum, and the Salafis were the ones who were more willing to work with Abiy. Meles Zenawi would have thought this was too dangerous, but Abiy thinks, “If you want to work with me and play a constructive role, I’m not going to block you.”

At the same time, I have never seen political space in Ethiopia as reduced as it is now. It’s incredible to see. Under the EPRDF, you know where the red line was. Now you don’t know where the red line is and that’s why everybody is careful not to overstep in any way or form. So that’s an important part of this – he controls Addis Ababa in a very extreme manner. Of course, the rest of the country is beyond his control due to insurgencies and civil war.

AT: You mention Haile Selassie twice in the article, and you conclude by saying that “Abiy is more or less the new emperor in Ethiopia” (p. 79). What parallels and differences stand out to you when comparing the political styles of Abiy Ahmed and Haile Selassie?

TØ: You could say that every political leader since Haile Selassie was Haile Selassie in the sense of being the “grand man.” Mengistu Haile Mariam literally killed his opponents and could rule as a kind of emperor. Meles Zenawi didn’t literally kill his opponents, but power was vested in him. And Abiy is doing the same thing. There’s a tradition for this, which is not uncommon in other African contexts.

In terms of differences, the 1955 constitution defined Haile Selassie as a divine figure. That was based upon doctrinal positions of the church – it was vested in a written tradition that was several hundred years old. That was the teaching of the church and the foundation of the Monarchy.

Abiy doesn’t have that. He has his own “revelation,” his mother’s “prophecy,” his own conception of his authority. That is far more fragile – he cannot refer to anything or anybody else except himself and his experiences, his belief in, being divinely appointed or being called. There are Pentecostal preachers and others that have “confirmed” this, but they don’t have any sources other than themselves. So his religious legitimacy is not as secure.

But he is the first one since Haile Selassie who has openly confessed his faith in this way and has used religious language in a similar manner. And he is by far the most nationalistic figure in his approach to leadership – at the video of the inauguration of the new dam, when they sang the national anthem, you can see tears streaming down his face. People mocked him for that, but there is this nationalist fervor and emotion that is different from his predecessors, who were more cynical.

AT: Pivoting for this last question to a different publication of yours, you and several co-authors wrote a report for the European Institute of Peace in 2021 on inter-communal conflict in Ethiopia. You wrote, “it remains important to keep analysing the inter-communal tensions and conflicts lines that had already emerged all over the country before the fighting in Tigray and continue to persist in parallel.” Could you tell us some of the most important drivers of inter-communal violence in Ethiopia? And what have been some key developments regarding inter-communal tensions since the report came out?

TØ: Ethnic divides are the key point here, the key force that sets people up against each other. You have conflicts that have always been there, that have popped up here and there. But for now, a main driver is the complete lack of law and order. Many people never leave the capital except by plane. There’s ethnic conflict, there’s a large amount of kidnappings and criminal elements. All this makes everything insecure.

When you dig into a particular conflict, there are always layers. You might say, “This is based on religion” or “this is based on ethnicity,” but to really understand dynamics on the ground, you need to have a bottom-up approach. And from there on you could say something meaningful about the larger picture. But unfortunately, without the ability to move and travel, there’s just so little research being done. Our understanding is so low. Because of the uncertainties and the instability, diplomats and the international community don’t leave the capital – they’re not allowed to travel to certain areas. It’s a very bleak situation. The galloping corruption at all levels is completely out of control. The level of inflation and the aggressive tax collection is putting people between a rock and a hard place. Everybody is struggling. And then you have the Prime Minister going to the media, inaugurating this and that, cutting ribbons here and there, and the war with Eritrea is looming.