Al-Ahbash

Al-Ahbash, meaning the Ethiopians and also known as the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects, is a Sufi religious movement and, in Lebanon, a political party, following the teachings of the Ethiopian scholar Abdullah al-Harari and drawing its Sufi practices from the Rifa'i order. It began as a charitable association founded by Ahmad al-Ajuz in the 1930s, and after arriving in Lebanon in the 1950s its adherents blended Sunni and Shia theology with Sufi spiritualism; it took the formal name Al-Ahbash in 1983, emerging from the Beirut suburb of Bourj Abu Haidar as a small philanthropic and spiritualist movement among lower-class Sunni communities. With backing from Syrian intelligence during a period that saw it take over prominent West Beirut mosques, it expanded through the 1990s into what accounts from its own high-ranking members describe as the largest Sunni religious organization in Lebanon, with membership reaching an estimated 250,000 worldwide by the late 1990s.