veiled4allah: Rwanda: Where Islam is part of the healing

This week marks ten years since the genocide in Rwanda. First, go read Ten Years After the Rwanda Massacres.

My own entry focuses on one small aspect of post-genocide Rwanda: the role of Islam in helping the healing of Rwanda. So many of the news stories about Islam and the Muslim world today seem to be negative so I wanted to highlight a place where Islam is making a positive difference to society.

Since 1994, the Muslim population in Rwanda has doubled:

Muslims now make up 14 percent of the 8.2 million people here in Africa's most Catholic nation, twice as many as before the killings began, reported the Washington Post. According to the newspaper, many converts say they chose Islam because of the role that some Catholic and Protestant leaders played in the genocide.

"Human rights groups have documented several incidents in which Christian clerics allowed Tutsis to seek refuge in churches, then surrendered them to Hutu death squads, as well as instances of Hutu priests and ministers encouraging their congregations to kill Tutsis. Today some churches serve as memorials to the many people slaughtered among their pews," said the paper.

Four clergymen are facing genocide charges at the U.N.-created International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and last year in Belgium, the former colonial power, two Rwandan nuns were convicted of murder for their roles in the massacre of 7,000 Tutsis who sought protection at a Benedictine convent, it added.

During the genocide, many Muslim leaders and families are being honored for protecting and hiding those who were fleeing, reported the Post.

"I know people in America think Muslims are terrorists, but for Rwandans they were our freedom fighters during the genocide," said Jean Pierre Sagahutu, 37, a Tutsi who converted to Islam from Catholicism after his father and nine other members of his family were slaughtered, the paper reported.

"I wanted to hide in a church, but that was the worst place to go. Instead, a Muslim family took me. They saved my life."

Others tell a similar story:

Twenty-year-old Zafran Mukantwari was the only person in her family who survived the genocide. I meet her sitting outside Kigali's Al-Aqsa mosque.

She is tightly veiled and speaks softly as she tells me what happened 10 years ago.

Her family were Catholic, she says. Those who killed them worshipped at the same church.

At the age of 10, Zafran found herself alone and at first she continued going to church.

She thought she could find support there. But then she began to question her faith.

"When I realised that the people I was praying with killed my parents, I preferred to become a Muslim because Muslims did not kill." ...

...Sheikh Saleh Habimana, the Mufti of Rwanda, is the representative of the country's Muslims.

He says many turned to Islam because Muslims were seen to have acted differently.

"The roofs of Muslim houses were full of non-Muslims hiding. Muslims are not answerable before God for the blood of innocent people."

But after the genocide, converting to Islam was also seen by some as the safest option.

"For the Hutus, everyone was saying as long as I look like a Muslim everybody will accept that I don't have blood on my hands.

"And for the Tutsis they said let me embrace Islam because Muslims in genocide never die. So one was looking for purification, the other was looking for protection."

The Muslim leadership in Rwanda have continued to be active:

Imams across the country held meetings after September 11, 2001, to clarify what it means to be a Muslim, the paper said. "I told everyone, 'Islam means peace,'" said Imiyimana, recalling that the mosque was packed that day. "Considering our track record, it wasn't hard to convince them."

Muslims need to continue becoming more actively involved in our societies and in doing good works so that we all have a good track record to point to. There is much that we can learn from a country that has suffered as much as Rwanda has.