ADDIS ABABA - Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed warned the United Arab Emirates that the Persian Gulf country is not fit to teach Islam to the Ethiopians.
"You have lost the religion,” Abiy told Muhammad bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi crown prince, in a private conversation, in response to bin Zayed’s suggestion that the Emiratis could help Ethiopians with the establishment of an Islamic institute.
In his speech to the Ethiopian diaspora in Virginia on Friday, Abiy said that when he asked the Abu Dhabi crown prince how he could help with the establishment of an Islamic center in Ethiopia, he replied saying: "we will help you with many things. We will teach you,” to which Ahmed replied: "We don’t need to learn the religion from you. You’ve lost the religion. What we need is to learn Arabic quickly, so we could better understand the religion and teach it to you, and return you to it.”
When bin Zayed asked him why, he said that Islam is about peace, unlike what is happening in the Middle East.
"The Islam that does not look like true Islam has begun spreading amongst you, and you have forgotten peace and how to forgive,” Abiy told bin Zayed.
In his speech, Ahmed said that Ethiopian Muslims alone, who represent 40% of the population, outnumber the Muslims of the United Arab Emirates and its Persian Gulf neighbors Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined. Ethiopia is Africa's second most populous country, with nearly 108 million people.
Abiy, 41, was born to a Muslim father and Christian mother. He has been credited for instituting a number of immediate political reforms, such as releasing political prisoners and signing a peace deal with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s northern neighbor, after two decades of conflict.
On Thursday, UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash claimed that his country can take on a bigger military role in the region.
Gargash said the UAE was ready to deploy more troops across the Middle East now that the U.S. and the European countries differed on their policies toward the security of the region.
The UAE has spent billions on military equipment and weapons in recent years. It has joined Saudi Arabia in a devastating war against Yemen that has claimed the lives of around 15,000 people, mostly civilians.
Furthermore, the Emirates is trying to establish control over the strategic island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea, which Yemen’s resigned president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi had rented out to the Persian Gulf kingdom for nearly a century.
The UAE is also believed to be trying to establish its foothold in North Africa. It is seen as a main impediment to peace in Libya by providing financial support to the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), led by General Khalifa Haftar.
The UAE has also established bases and commercial ports in northern Somalia as well as a base in the Eritrean port of Assab. In February, the UAE agreed with the authorities of Somalia’s breakaway northern territory of Somaliland to open a naval base in the port town of Berbera.
The UAE is among the world’s top five arms importers, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in June. The report said the country even outpaced China in buying arms in the past five years, adding that main suppliers of weapons to the country were the U.S., Britain and France.
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