Respect and Love to the Fair People of the Friendly Land: Ethiopia!

Following the news about home from far away is not easy and I don’t really have time recently to follow up even local news in my small community or in the state that I’m living at. However, even when you are thousands of miles away from home.. news find their way to you, thanks to the digital age technology that made it so simple. Recently, I was hammered with tons of info, videos and photos of the riots of Riyadh. So, my comment to the event might not be swiftest but it’s certainly is sincere and pure.

First of all, My condolences to the families of the victim(s) and I pray that all the injured will be stable and recover soon, inshallah (God-Willing).  There were some reasons that led to these sad events were that area of the city became a scene of a Hollywood action movie overnight. I’ve not had the opportunity to study and analyze the situation and I’m not intending to. I just wanted to say that I’m sad to how things turned out.

The thing that saddens me the most is blaming a whole race, nation and country of these riots. Unfortunately, some Saudis people were agitating hatred towards Ethiopians and blaming them for everything. I understand that a few individuals who happened to be Ethiopians were troublemakers but they definitely do not represent the good Ethiopian people. I met many people from Ethiopia and I always had good time with them and never a single bad experience.. some of them became good friends to me and we have a lot of respect to each other. 

I really find it weird that some people question the Ethiopians and their ethics. Let me remind myself, all the Saudis and the Muslims around the world of the great favor that Ethiopia did to us in one of our most challenging times; the migration of prosecuted Muslims to Abyssinia in 613-615.

“Negus treated the Muslims with honor and pledged his protection to them. Both crestfallen envoys of the Quraysh had to leave Abyssinia in great shame while the Muslims lived there in peace and security.” (Ibn Hisham, pp. 334-38)

That happened at the time when Muslims were prosecuted by their own cousins, tribes and people who did not like them for their faith. Yet, a king in the flourishing civilization of Abyssinia offered them a haven and refused to harm them after the Qurish family sent their messengers to the king Nequs (Al-Najashi). When the Messenger of Allah saw the persecution to which his companions were subjected and from which he could not protect them, he suggested to them, 'If you were to go to Abyssinia, you would find a king there who does not wrong anyone. It is a friendly land and you could stay there until Allah grants us relief.'

The Prophet – PBUH – said that their king is fair who came from a fair environment and their land is friendly and how come we expect anything but good people from that land. I think Ethiopians deserve a better treatment and we should never hold grudges on them over a few tens of troublemakers who do not represent the true nature of those great people. I’ve heard of inhumane treatment even to people who did not get involved in that riot which is absolutely unacceptable even if some of them were provoking troubles, they should’ve been stopped but in a humane way. I hope what I heard about racism towards Ethiopians and treating many of them in inhumane way is not true.

I hope that the people of Ethiopians and Saudi Arabia restore trust in each other and take this chance to diffuse the tension between the two peoples and upset the plotters who are trying so hard to use these events to create friction between us, to serve their agendas.

All the respect and love to the fair people of the friendly land! May both nations be at peace, inshallah!