The Prophetic Advice to Desist from Ethiopia

دَعُوا الْحَبَشَةَ مَا وَدَعُوكُم، وَاتْرُكُوا التّرْكَ مَا تَرَكُوكُم
“Leave the Ethiopians so long as they leave you, and desist from the Turkic nations, so long as they desist from you.”
[Abû Dâwud's Sunan, an-Nasâ'î's Sunan, and others]

Failure to follow the aforementioned advice of the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) has had devestating consequences in Islamic history. If one observes the map of largely Muslim North Africa, one can’t help but notice that in a solid belt of Muslim nations one finds the Christian nation of Ethiopia sticking out like a sore thumb. This is because the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula remembered well the advice of their resident and Prophet who had shown great tolerance and respect for the Christians of Ethiopia, then called Abyssinia or “Habasha” in Arabic.

However, the Persians to the East did not heed the advice so well and perhaps were not even exposed to the Hadith quoted at the beginning of this blog entry. So as the Arabs heeded this Hadith and avoided conflict with the Ethiopians, the Persian and Turkic Muslims did not heed the advice to the East when they were faced with the other half of this Hadith: The Turko-Mongoloid confederacy of Genghis Khan.

Genghis Khan, though demonized by medieval historians and in many instances rightfully so, was concerned primarily with the prosperity and unity of his people North of the Great Wall of China. He had no initial intentions of global conquest. So as he united his people under one strong national identity he pursued the first key to the strengh of any nation: Trade and Economy.

His neighbors were the Muslim Shahs of Khwarezm, the homeland of Al-Khwarezmi after whom was named the computational term “Algorithm”. The following is an account of Genghis Khan’s efforts to establish peaceful trade and diplomatic relations. Genghis Khan sent three different diplomatic missions to the Shah, all of which were murdered and/or humiliated. The Mongols, believing strongly in revenge, invaded Khwarezm and due to a series of strategic bungles by the Shah destroyed a much larger army therein and utterly decimated the population. This started an unexpected momentum of Mongol incursion into the Muslim world that reached all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. It was a holocaust from which the Muslim world has not recovered to this day.

Imagine what would have happened if the Muslims disobeyed this order of the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) on both fronts, seeking conflict with both the Mongols as they had in the 12th century and hostility with the Ethiopians!

Wait…

It looks like one group of Muslims is on the verge of disobeying the other half:

“Somali hardliner calls for foreign jihadists

Xan Rice in Nairobi
Sunday December 24, 2006
The Observer

A hardline Somali Islamist has called on foreign Muslims to take up arms in a ‘holy war’ against Ethiopia. Yusuf Mohamed Siad Inda’ade, the security chief of the Somali Council of Islamic Courts, told reporters in Mogadishu yesterday that the country ‘is open to Muslims worldwide’.”

اتركوا الحبشة ما تركوكم، فإنه لا يستخرج كنز الكعبة إلا ذو السويقتين من الحبشة
“Desist from the Ethiopians so long as they desist from you. For none will extract the Keys of the Ka`bah except for Dhu-Suwayqatayn of Ethiopia.”
[Al-Hâkim's Mustadrak, Ahmad's Musnad, al-Bazzâr, and others]

Just as the Neo-Con evangelists are bent on ushering in the return of Christ and the end of the world with their modern day Crusader foreign policy, it appears they have their counterparts in the Muslim world, though I doubt their ushering in of the end of the world is quite as intentional.