International Extremists Gaining Ground in Ethiopia

On the night of May 31, 2026, in East Arsi, armed men went house to house, killing Orthodox Christians in their homes, on the roads, and as they fled. They burned the Church of St. Gabriel, which had stood for 101 years, to the ground.

This was not an isolated incident; it reflects a recurring pattern across the Oromo region — one so consistent that the word “incident” no longer suffices.

The question is not whether Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia are being targeted for their faith. That reality is amply documented by the US government, the European Parliament, the UK Parliament, media outlets, and numerous international human rights and religious organizations. The real question concerns the source and transmission mechanism of this radical Islamic ideology.

As I have stressed in an earlier article, in the right hands, Islam is peace and justice. Sadly, in the wrong hands, it is proven violent. This is often the case with Salafi reformists and adherents of Wahhabism. Roughly two decades ago, Ethiopian followers of such a sect drafted a confidential manifesto to recruit hundreds of thousands of political Islamic activists. As later exposed in leaked audio, the objective was clear: to attack, divide, isolate, humiliate, frighten, weaken, and ultimately force the adversary into submission and conversion. The narrator was Ustaz Ahmedin Jabel, and the target was the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

This radical movement is neither homegrown nor indigenous; it is an imported ideology. Its primary global figurehead is Zakir Naik, an Indian national and proponent of an extreme form of political Islam. Locally, extremist activists serve as a transmission belt, translating Naik’s theology into the Ethiopian religious landscape. Chief among them are Ustaz Ahmedin Jabel, Ustaz Yasin Nuru, and Ustaz Abubaker Ahmed.

Naik’s theology is rooted in Salafism and revivalism. His speeches and writings demand a return to the practices of the salaf — the earliest generations of Muslims — while rejecting modern pluralism. Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Al-Shabaab, among other radical groups, similarly adhere to Salafism and revivalism.

In a 2007 interview with the Indian Express, Naik was asked why non-Muslims may build mosques in London and Paris while churches and temples are forbidden in Saudi Arabia. He responded with an analogy to mathematics: if a school principal were hiring a math teacher, they would only hire the candidate who correctly states that two plus two equals four, not three. By that same logic, Naik argued, a state that knows Islam to be the truth cannot license the propagation of a false religion. “How can we allow this,” he asked, “when their religion is wrong and when their worshipping is wrong?”

The same reasoning governs his position on apostasy: a Muslim who leaves the faith quietly may be left alone, but one who propagates another faith publicly or speaks against Islam should face the death penalty. The asymmetry is total. A Christian who converts to Islam and denounces Christianity is celebrated as a seeker of truth, while a Muslim who converts to Christianity and honors their new faith in public is treated as a capital offender.

Naik’s radicalism has drawn widespread international sanctions. He was barred from entering the United Kingdom and denied a visa by Canada in 2010. In Malaysia, where he holds permanent residency, multiple state governments have banned him from preaching since 2019. His broadcast network, Peace TV, has been banned or blocked in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Canada, and the UK. In 2020, the UK media regulator Ofcom fined the network’s license holders £300,000 for broadcasting hate speech and content likely to incite crime.

In Ethiopia, his followers have adopted this theology wholesale. A generation of young Ethiopian Muslims is being taught that Christianity is a demonstrable error rather than a different path, that its houses of worship have no rightful claim to exist in a properly ordered state, and that interfaith relations are inherently adversarial. Consequently, social media is flooded with calls to slaughter Christians and burn their churches and Tabots.

Over the past decade, Amharic-language Islamic channels have expanded into a massive digital ecosystem, becoming the primary bridge connecting young, urban Muslims to global Islamic radicals. Outlets on YouTube, Telegram, and Facebook — such as Harun Media, Ibn Masud Tube, Bilal Nation, and Ali Mehdi Official — boast hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Featuring studio lighting, podcast formats, and highly shareable clips, this network is driven by algorithms rather than traditional madrasa instruction. The audience skews young, urban, and educated — deliberately targeting the most politically active segment of society.

Ustaz Ahmedin Jabel, Ustaz Yasin Nuru, and Ustaz Abubaker Ahmed may not explicitly call for violence; that is not their function. While they publicly claim to promote religious equality, they simultaneously transmit Naik’s rhetoric, propagating the claim that Islam is the sole truth and that other religions should not be permitted to preach.

Their role is to peddle grievance, and they know precisely what they are cultivating. The distance between Naik’s declaration that “their worship is wrong” and Ahmedin’s assertion that “your enemy is preparing to attack you... compel their surrender” is tragically short.

Primed to view the Orthodox Church as both illegitimate and an existential threat, a polarized youth requires little encouragement to cross into physical violence. This is the pipeline connecting radical theology to real-world harm: at the top sits an imported ideology dressed in the language of logic; in the middle is a localized transmission belt; and at the bottom are indoctrinated activists ready to kill Christians and burn churches.