Comments on: Duality of Ethiopianism

By: oromantic

oromantic — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:41:52 +0000

^^ I think you’re exagerating what happened a little bit. Hidiyyas were not proscuted by Arsii Oromos. What really happened was since the Hadiyyas with their foreign customs and religion started assimilating to the Arsii Oromo, there was some resistance from the Arsii Oromo side to give them equal rights within the Gadaa system. That makes perfect sense because as we all know the Gadaa system puts father and son in the same group. And the assimilated Hadiyyas wouldn’t meet that criteria so they probably were assigned in a different class. Arsii Oromos are well known in resisting any kind of foreign incursions.

Arsii Oromos Resistance against Menelik’s conquest.

Regarding religion, it is obviously a sensitive issue for many and nobody should force anyone into conversion as the Chrsitans and Muslims did in their Crusades and Jihads in the past. If you have noticed what I said in my previous response, I only said we need to revive Waaqeffannaa, Oromos traditional religion, and not convert every Oromo. Each individual could chose whatever God to worship but as for me and many enlightened Oromos we worship the God of our forfathers, the one and only, the Great Waaq.
I can’t deny that religions pass through a lot of development stages and a lot of turmoils but those who follow the right spirit in one form or another are blessed and are going to be continually blessed.

By: TDM

TDM — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:07:49 +0000

i agree with you about islam being foreign for our ancestors at that time. but i don’t think our ancestors should have persecuted hadiya, or others like sidama or any people for ANY purpose (either religion, clan or ethnic differences etc) Making minorities a “lowel class” society inside the Gadaa system of Arsi oromos was a dark side of Gadaa system and our history that we can’t avoid if we are truly critical & independent assessors of our own history.

About going back to Waaqa. That is very unrealistic in my opinion.Many oromos have already adopted islam, orthodox and protestanism. Even in theory, going back to waaqa is flawed because there is a lot of assumption that Waaqa was the religion of oromos since the DAWN OF TIME. Is it really? Let consider some examples. Why do orthodox abeshas persecute evangelical habeshas?? They say the “indegenious” religion of abeshas is Orthodox only. But is this really true?? No! Before armenian, syrian evangelists came to axum, the habeshas were either “pagans” or practicing other non-orthodox religions. So the idea of indigenous religion is a myth. This is the case all around the world. After the Romans adopted christianity, they defended their ancestors’ religion of christianity during their Crusades centuries ago. But if we are true to ourselves, we all know the Romans had many other religions before Christianity, And even other religions before before that etc.

Humanity is more than 10 thousand years old (According to some religious measurements) or more than 10 million years (according to some archeological measurements) So Are you saying our ancestors’ belief in waaqa EXISTED for all these many thousands or milions of years pre-islam/orthodox/protestant era?? i doubt it highly.
So my opinion is we should NOT try to force oromos change back to waaqa because

#1
-it is unrealistic venture to reverse religion of over 95% of oromos

#2
- the idea that waaqa is the only indigenous religion of ALL oromos for thousands or millions of years continuously is unrealistic and opposes factors of geographical, historical and other man-made & natural changes.

- most of all, just like previous persecution of non-oromos inside Gadaa system, it makes us persecute other ethnic, clan or religious groups just because others don’t satisfy our narrow requirements and assumptions of indigeneity.

By: oromantic

oromantic — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:56:20 +0000

^^ The reason why the Arsi Oromos didn’t treat the Hadiyyas favorably in the Gadaa system is not because they considered them lower class or anything but rather purely from religios point of view. As it is written in the book you cited, the Hadiyyas were “correpted with Arabic denomiantion”. This brings us back to the first point we agreed up on. We should not adopt foreign names, cultures, religion when we have our own. Back in the day, the majority of Oromos believed in Waaqa, their God but since they didn’t resist the expanssion of Islam and Chrisianity now most Oromos don’t worship the God of their ancestors the same way; eventhough most Oromos incorporated most spiritual traditions of their forefathers in their present day religion. I say we should revive Waaqeffannaa and heal our spirits.

By: TDM

TDM — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:22:12 +0000

oromantic,
i am happy you agree about the label africa itself. i am mad when some black nationalists show obsession over the label “africa” since it is foreign itself. it is tunis and libyan and that maybe why libyans and arabs are obessessed about United States of Africa idea. they think they should lead sub-sahara black people. it is important that we understand this.

about hadiya discrimination by oromos, you can find it in many ancient books because not just hadiya but our oromo ancestors discrimated against many southern people. “Survival of the fittest” was the game of the past era so don’t be surprised about this. we should worry about the present, not the past because discrimination and slavery existed between all peoples. anyway read this text one for example. it says hadiyas were considered to be of a lower social status than the Oromo and did not possess equal rights in the Gadaa system.

http://books.google.com/books?id=HGnyk8Pg9NgC&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=considered+to+be+of+a+lower+social+status+than+the+pure+oromo+and+did+not+possess+equal+rights+in+the+gada+system&source=web&ots=sXwrNens0D&sig=HzZkNJF-WJ6-aa9y0kQE8SImR44&hl=en

By: oromantic

oromantic — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 20:02:29 +0000

I agree with you on the fact that Habeshas are not indigenous to our black continent because they came from South Arabia. The words “Ethiopia” as well as “Africa” are foreign labels given to dark skinned ppl of present day Africa.
About your criticism of Prof. Assafa Jalata, maybe you don’t know enough about him and his remarkable works.
Here is one that invalidates your argument.

Do you have any evidence for Haddiyas’ discrimination by another Cush? I don’t think you do but if you show me something then we could discuss about it further. Thank you!

By: TDM

TDM — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:04:48 +0000

jalata is often bias, though sometimes informative. the africaness itself is contradictory since the label “Africa” itself was less bless, related to the Tunisians and arabs. so the reasoning to compare between habesha and africa is stupid because both labels are not indigenious to “black africa”
anyway, second, jalata is sometimes not being real to racism that exists everywhere in our world. between blacks, between whites. the hadiyya for example were looked down upon by ancient oromo people. why? well, because oromos, amharas all people are not perfect and racism exists everywhere.
the beginning of the document does not recognize these two important things so it is useless.