The Effect of the Ahbâsh Sect on the Harari Community in Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

This study explores the effect of the Ahbâsh sect on the Harari community of Melbourne with the objectives of describing the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents, the various activities/programmes of the Ahbâsh Sect in the study area, factors determining willingness to participate as well as the intensity of participation in the Ahbâsh Sect activities/programmes in the study area. As the Harari community in Melbourne are in roughly four groups, stratified random sampling was used. A representative sample size of 65, 80, 80 and 170 was taken from the Krejcie and Morgan's sample size determination table for the population size of each group. Thus a total of 395 individuals were randomly chosen from the community but only 287 of the returned questionnaires were useful for the analysis; resulting in about a 72.7% response rate. Descriptive and double hurdle inferential statistics were used to describe the respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics and identify factors that determine the willingness and intensity of participation in the sect’s activities. The results show that 51.57% of the respondents were male while 48.43% were female. Most of the respondents are in 51-60 age group at 27.53%, 60.28% of the respondents are a member of one of the three Harari community organizations and 39.72% are not. About 65.85% are married and 30.31% are singles, 3.38% divorced and only 0.35% are widowed. The results of the double hurdle analysis indicated that age of the respondents, household size and years of occupation significantly determined the willingness of the respondents to participate in sect activities while gender, age, education level, understanding of Arabic and Harari languages influenced the likelihood of intense participation in sect members various activities with different levels of significance. The study recommends that the Harari community of Melbourne and anyone anywhere else to keep away from the Ahbâsh sect. They should equip themselves by a good religious education from a trustworthy sources and prepare alternatives places to their children. At the same time they need to speak publicly against the deviance of this sect and openly challenge them.