Apparently, Haile Selassie did not resort to overt and public methods in persecuting Muslims, but he followed the same procedures by excluding Muslims from state jobs and their departments, and from political life in general. He allowed them to practice private activities such as trade, agriculture, and herding. This is what some European writers described as "simple religious tolerance." It goes without saying that Christianity, especially the Orthodox denomination, enjoyed state protection and was considered its official denomination. The constitution stipulated this, linking Ethiopian nationality with the Orthodox denomination. The Patriarch of the Church was a member of the Crown Council and the Regency Council. Ethiopia is teeming with churches, monasteries, priests, and monks, and the Church owned about a third of the agricultural land. In western Ethiopia, there was also the Falasha community, who had no presence or role in public life in Ethiopia due to their small numbers, isolation, and the contempt of Ethiopians for them. The Italians did not include the Falasha Jews in their estimates of religious distribution for the population of Abyssinia in 1939, which was 7,500,000 at the time. Among them, Muslims numbered 96,500, Christians 96,380, and pagans 96,120. The transition period in the rule of the provinces between 1931 and 1935 had negative repercussions on the military power that was traditionally gathered from the provinces by their rulers. The Emperor was interested in building a modern army and used a military mission from Belgium for this purpose. The modern regular army units were formed in the Imperial Guard in 1934, and the Officer Training College was opened in "Holta" west of the capital by a Swedish military mission. When the Italians began their attack on the Empire, some of the northern provincial rulers joined the Italian forces and were appointed governors of these provinces after the Italian victory. Others fought without enthusiasm and under duress under the command of their new rulers. The regular army, which had begun to be formed, was not effective, and the first batch of officers at the "Holta" college had not completed their training at the beginning of the war.