LOCAL REFORMERS and the SEARCH for CHANGE: The EMERGENCE of SALAFISM in BALE, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Since 1991 Salafism has gained renewed strength in Ethiopia, spurred increased tensions within the Muslim community, and created concern among the Christian population. This contribution focuses on the early emergence of Salafism in the area of Bale, currently one of the movement's strongholds. It discusses its initial arrival in south-eastern Ethiopia, and pays particular attention to the developments in Bale during the 1960s. Challenging the notion that treats Islamic reform as seemingly homogeneous and as 'foreign'-distinctly separated from 'local' Islam-the contribution explores the arrival of the Salafi teaching from Saudi Arabia, and follows the process of reform embodied in an emerging group of local merchants and in graduates returning from studies in Saudi Arabia. The contribution highlights how socio-economic changes and developments of infrastructure facilitated the emergence of new groups of actors, transcending local boundaries and actively generating novel discourses about religious symbols and practices. It also demonstrates how a diversified body of situated actors was crucial for the appropriation and domestication of the Salafi message, and points to the trajectory of reform as a dialectical process of moulding that related such influences to the local context.