“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope
would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for
love would be love for the wrong thing; there is yet faith but
the faith and the love are all in waiting. Wait without thought,
for you are not ready for thought: so the darkness shall be the
light, and the stillness the dancing,”
-T.S. Eliot
For my mother, Kadija Sheik Ibrahim, I was the only child. My father, Sheik Mohammed Kanku, had a number of other children from other women. My mother was a cool observer of life. Even though she was the daughter of a famous Muslim cleric, she mostly followed her own natural instincts, wisdom, and personal experience, rather than the rigid rules and the rituals of the dogma. She was kind and friendly to human beings irrespective of their religion and appearances. She tried unsuccessfully to protect me against general hypocrisy of the traditional family life and the community.. But I was too playful, too young to seriously heed her at the time. Often, she said, “ Look at what they do, not only at what they preach.” She avidly pointed out to me certain recurrent double standards especially in the behaviour of my father, who was himself a cleric.
Later, under the influence of my father, I interrupted my education for long time and wandered from region to region in the countryside to study Fiqh, Tafsir and Hadith with various Ulamah in Bale. That was in itself all right. Yet my own experience in the course of my life confirmed my mother’s fears and warnings. I started quite early to appreciate her practical wisdom, her self- awareness, her vigour and her general positive outlook. I do not regret today what I went through. I have learned how to value all my experiences. And I do not blame my father for anything. His intentions were mostly well meant and must be seen in the context of his time. If I regretted my experiences, I would not be the person I am today- a free human being with all my weaknesses. Life is a great teacher for those who are open to their own experiences.
Today, the misuse of religions, all religions, for power worries me a lot. It is a global issue that needs urgent considerations. I do not need to prove that the general complacency in this matter is highly dangerous. It is self- evident for those who have open eyes. It is not only the absolute Arab rulers and religious fanatics who are misusing religions in their power game. For technologically advanced global imperialism religious blinkers are meant to prevent the horses from seeing sideways, to forge adversity among cultures so that they forfeit, in the interest of the few, genuine human solidarity in the general struggle for genuine democracy and social justice.
There are many readers, even those belonging to my own oppressed nation, who avoid this site because of its openness and leftist leanings. But for me ideals and ideologies, including the leftist ideology, are pointless unless they deal practically in positive and mainly peaceful manner with real human conditions with compassion for the terrible, unnecessary and pointless man- made human suffering. For me there are many forms of suffering that are meaningful and necessary for the renewal of the body and the spirit. This is a big topic on its own that needs independent and separate treatment.
In any case, a great part of our problem is that most of us, as individuals and as communities, disavow our own roles in creating our conditions of suffering. Most of us, including myself, are quick to point fingers only at external factors such as colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism or at our dictators or our political elites in their service.
Take, for example, the Oromo problem which I often raise here. Basically, most Oromos had knowingly and unknowingly facilitated the Abyssinian military conquest in the last decades of the nineteenth century.. It happened at a point in their history when most of them already neglected and deserted their own collective spirit, their collective solidarity, their dreams and ideals. The result was that many regions surrendered without resistance to the advancing Amhara armies led by highly brutal feudal war lords with the direct support of European colonial powers. We have been exposed ever since to increasing brutality, oppression, poverty and environmental degradations. I do not see light at the end of the tunnel unless we take risks and reconcile ourselves with and regain our collective spirit. Only then can we learn to live as respected human beings with others in a more just global village. For this we need inner work, courage, steadfastness, personal and communal discipline and integrity to transform the negative aspects of our past as well as our present into a positive energy that serves our people’s liberation and mankind.
We know now that instead of forging their own basic democratic and communal ethos, many Oromos had already made themselves open to conflicting religious propaganda going separate ways spiritually long before the Abyssinian conquest.. Hence the distrust that is not easy to bridge even today despite our highly pretentious nationalism. My aim here is not to blame the Oromos of the past or the history. The most important thing at present is to learn from the lessons of our history. Otherwise it will keep repeating itself more mercilessly than ever until we get its message. History and nature do not forgive easily. So we must stop disavowing our reality whatever it is. We have to accept our reality lovingly as it is with greater self-awareness and revolutionary commitment if we want real change and renewal.
My aim in this site is to swim against the tide and not to please everybody. As things stand today, we are very far from defeating the Abyssinian tyranny. First we must defeat the tyranny of fear, lethargy and passivity that are holding us down. We have to defeat our false hope and our false love for wrong things, as T.S Eliot would be saying. We have to overcome our opportunism, our secret and open foolish convictions. Our shallow loyalties to which we are all addicted in different degrees will only hinder us from moving ahead..
At present, the reality of the Oromo people and their political elites is too complex to summarize easily. In short, there are Oromo cliques and individuals who are openly, directly or indirectly trying to compromise the right of our people to self determination and independence for selfish reasons. The most notorious among them in the Diaspora is the ODF clique vowing to democratize the Abyssinian dominated empire to please the Abyssinian elites and their masters. Most of these disorganized cliques are made up of self centred individuals and are easy to deal with and to expose, if there is serious determination to do so in an organized manner.. The problem is slightly different when we deal with the Dawit clique in Asmara. On the surface of it, this clique is still theoretically defending the right of the Oromo people to self determination and independence. In practice it is not much different from the ODF. Besides, it is likewise a lame duck under the direct control of the EPLF and its leader Isaias who are clearly against Oromo independence. The Abyssinian political world is a person-centred world. Most Oromos have adopted this outlook imperceptibly. The supporters of Dawit and Lenco in paltalk rooms and elsewhere are vying with one another and still refuse vehemently to drop their worn out blinkers to see sideways properly to grasp the reality. Most of us are not ready for serious thoughts, much less for serious actions. This is not pessimism; it is our reality. We need urgently to admit it individually and collectively and deal with it at different levels. Then as T.S. Eliot said, “… the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”