Religious Identification in Transnational Contexts: Being and Becoming Muslim in Ethiopia and Canada

Diaspora 7:2 1998 Religious Identification in Transnational Contexts: Being and Becoming Muslim in Ethiopia and Canada Camilla Gibb University of Toronto1 Introduction The Harari are a recently formed diaspora of Muslim elites from the walled city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia. Ethiopians as a whole have not had a history ofmigration—ofmoving abroad permanently or changing their citizenship (Catholic Immigration Centre 1). The Harari have been particularly localized and were described as late as the mid-1960s as a "one city culture" (Waldron, "Social" 6) because the overwhelming majority of their numbers resided inside the old city wall. Today, only about one-third of the total population lives in the old city, the majority of them elder inhabitants. The largest concentration ofHararis outside Ethiopia is now in Toronto, Ontario: nearly 10% of the entire population lives in this diverse Canadian city. In this paper, I draw upon comparative ethnographic fieldwork with Hararis in Harar and Toronto to explore the ways in which this move from Ethiopia, as asylum seekers or as immigrants to Canada, has affected individual and group identities. Against the backdrop of Ethiopia's new multiethnic government, Canadian multiculturalism policies, and the refugee and immigrant journeys between the two countries, Hararis and members of more than the seventy other officially recognized qaMla,2 or nationalities , in Ethiopia3 are struggling to redefine themselves both at home and abroad. "Harariness," like other Ethiopian ethnic identities, draws variously upon linguistic, cultural, religious, political, and economic sources as well as on geographic and historical continuities and perceptions. Given their recent dispersal, Hararis are forced to construct an identity that is meaningful in transnational terms, in order both to ensure continuity of the group over time and spatial distance and to recreate community ideals and relationships in such a way that they are simultaneously relevant in new environments and responsive to changes taking place at home. Ethiopia's ethnic federalism, outlined briefly below, privileges particular ethnic identities or sub-nationalisms over national or religious identities, while Canada's official policy of multiculturalism asserts the primacy of 247 Diaspora 7:2 1998 nationalisms over sub-nationalisms or religions in determining identities. Many Harari in diasporic contexts have, however, turned to Islam as an ideological framework through which to cope with the upheaval of recent decades and to establish new relations in the non-Muslim countries in which they have resettled, asserting the primacy of religious identity over ethnic or national identities. Ethiopian Government and the Making of Refugees Since the overthrow of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the leader ofthe socialist dictatorship known as the Dergue,4 in 1991, Ethiopia has adopted a democratic constitution that guarantees basic human rights, including the right to freedom of expression in ethnocultural and religious terms. The new government elected in 1995 proposed to restructure the country along ethnic lines, dividing the country into nine ethnic regions,5 the smallest of which is the city-state of Harar, which were granted the right to self-determination, up to and including the right to secession. It was on the basis of this secession law that Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993, after thirty years ofprotracted struggle, though disputes over borders between Eritrea and the northern province of Tigray continue to this day. In an attempt to unify and bring under central control the disparate peoples of the Ethiopian region at the end of the last century, Amharic, the language of the Amhara (an ethnic designation of Christian highlanders who have dominated the region and the church since the thirteenth century), was adopted as the national language and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity as the religion ofthe Imperial state. For non-Amhara, Amharic became the prestige language of education and political power, and many non-Amhara assimilated into this largely class-determined categorybecause ofthe privileges associated with membership and allegiance. Under the rule of the last emperor, Haile Selassie (1930-1974), Christianity was privileged over Islam despite the fact that nearly 60% of the country was Muslim. While Christianity and Amharic were promoted as the religion and language of the Imperial state, the military dictatorship that seized power from Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 went further, demanding and enforcing linguistic, religious, and...