On May 18, 2026, Somaliland commemorates 35 years since it withdrew from its union with Somalia. This anniversary stands apart from the previous 34. For the first time, Somaliland enters its independence day as a state recognized by United Nations member Israel, which granted full diplomatic recognition on December 26, 2025, becoming the first country in the world to do so. Mogadishu’s response was to label it a “naked invasion” and attempt to leverage Islamic solidarity.
The choice of weapon is revealing. Somalia might have pursued a sovereignty argumentSomaliland’s international status remains contestedbut President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud instead made an Islamist one because religion travels further and is harder to counter.
Three-and-a-half decades of civil war, political collapse, corruption, mass bloodshed, and the internal displacement of millions of Somali Muslims is not the record of a government guided by Islamic principle.
Somalia might have made a sovereignty argument Somaliland’s broader international status remains contested but President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud instead made an Islamist one.
If Mogadishu wishes to claim faith as part of its legacy and legitimacy, it must explain why it so often turns to non-Muslim neighbors like Ethiopia and Kenya to broker, mediate, and at times physically reconstitute Somali state and federal governments. Mohamud did not refuse those negotiations on theological grounds, nor did he invoke Islamic edicts when he needed Nairobi’s conference rooms or Addis Ababa’s guarantees. Only when Somaliland acts in its own interest does cooperation with non-Muslim states become apostasy.
Recognition of a sovereign state is a legal and political act. At the United Nations Security Council, Israel’s own delegate invoked the Montevideo Convention in defending the recognition, noting that Somaliland has consistently met the objective criteria for statehood under customary international law. But even on purely theological groundseven accepting Mogadishu’s preferred terrainthe argument against Somaliland independence disintegrates.
Morocco established relations with Israel in December 2020. Its population is almost entirely Muslim. Sudan, whose people are overwhelmingly Muslim, followed within the same diplomatic cycle. Neither lost its seat at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Neither faced fatwa or formal censure from the Arab League. Egypt has maintained full diplomatic relations with Israel since 1979 and hosts the Arab League’s headquarters.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, among the most influential Muslim-majority states in the world, are now Abraham Accords signatories, with bilateral trade between Israel and the United Arab Emirates reaching $3 billion in 2024. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, which expresses Palestinian solidarity as political theater, sustains a trade relationship with Israel worth billions of dollars annuallya volume that has persisted through every round of turbulence.
If recognizing Israel were genuinely incompatible with Islamic governance, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation would be missing half its members. When Egypt signed its peace treaty with Israel in 1979, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation suspended it, but reinstated it a decade later.
When the Abraham Accords countries normalized relations in 2020, the Organization did not convene a censure vote. The assumed prohibition on relations with Israel has not survived contact with member states’ interests.
Mohamud now demands that Somaliland observe a rule that Somalia’s own partners, patrons, and fellow Organization of Islamic Cooperation members have rendered obsolete. The Palestinian cause is not a veto that one Muslim government may exercise over another’s bilateral choices.
A Muslim-majority government, in a water-scarce country, concluded that Israeli expertise was a national interest and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation said nothing.
Mohamud’s Islamist objection serves a different master. Turkey, which has made hostility to Israel a cornerstone of its foreign policy, runs its largest overseas military base in Mogadishu, has trained tens of thousands of Somali troops, and signed a ten-year defense pact in 2024 giving Ankara patrol rights over Somalia’s coastline and revenues from its exclusive economic zone.
Within days of the recognition, Erdoğan stood alongside Mohamud in Istanbul and condemned Israel’s move as “illegitimate and unacceptable” because an Israeli foothold on Somaliland’s coast is a strategic threat to Ankara’s position.
Somaliland’s shores sit astride the Gulf of Aden and the southern approach to Bab-el-Mandeb, the chokepoint through which a significant share of global maritime trade passes and over which the United States, China, Turkey, and Iran-backed Houthi rebels are all competing for position. Tehran and Ankara share a direct interest in denying Israel that foothold.
The case for Somaliland’s recognition is not sentimental. Israel was among the first countries to recognize Somaliland’s brief independence in 1960, and in 1990 was the only country to denounce the Isaaq genocide at the United Nations. The relationship predates Mohamud’s objections by decades.
Hargeisa is making the same calculation Rabat already made. After joining the Abraham Accords, Morocco reached a state-level agreement with Israel on desalination and wastewater reuse, and the Israeli firm IDE Technologies subsequently entered the bidding for an $880 million desalination plant to supply Casablanca and surrounding cities.
A Muslim-majority government, in a water-scarce country, concluded that Israeli expertise was a national interest and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation said nothing.
Kenya and Rwanda have reached identical conclusions through agriculture partnerships, precision irrigation technology, and long-term investment deals that have been running, in Kenya’s case, since independence. Somaliland simply demands the same policy solutions that other regional states choose.
Somalia has not held a credible one-person, one-vote election in three decades. It has ceded significant territory to al-Shabaab. It survives on foreign peacekeepers and donor budgets. It is in no position to lecture Hargeisa on statecraft or piety.