ISLAM BLOOMS IN GENOCIDE'S WAKE
Rwandans jump to faith they view as tolerant
Laurie Goering, Chicago Tribune, 8/5/02
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0208050150aug05.story
Long before the call to prayer begins each Friday at noon, Rwanda's Muslim
faithful jam the main mosque in Kigali's Nyamirambo neighborhood, the
overflow crowd spreading prayer rugs on the mosque steps, over the red
earth parking lot and out the front gate.
Almost a decade after a horrific genocide left 800,000 Rwandans dead and
shook the faith of this predominantly Christian nation, Islam, once seen as
a fringe religion, has surged in popularity. Women in bright tangerine,
scarlet and blue headscarves stroll the bustling streets of the capital
beside men in long white tunics and embroidered caps. Mosques and Islamic
schools are overflowing with students. Today about 14 percent of Rwandans
consider themselves Muslim, up from about 7 percent before the genocide.
"We're everywhere," says Sheik Saleh Habimana, the leader of Rwanda's
burgeoning Muslim community, which has mosques in nearly all of the
country's cities and towns...
From April to June 1994, militias and mobs from the country's ethnic Hutu
majority hunted and murdered hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis at the
government's urging. Within a few months, three of four Tutsis in the
country had been hacked to death, often with machetes or hoes. More than
100,000 suspected killers eventually were jailed.
The genocide stunned Rwanda's Christian community. While clergy in many
communities struggled to protect their congregations and died with them,
some prominent Catholic and Protestant leaders joined in the killing spree
and are facing prosecution.
At the same time, Rwanda's Muslims--many of them intermarried Tutsi-Hutu
couples--were opening their homes to thousands of desperate Tutsis. Muslim
families for the most part succeeded in hiding Tutsis from the Hutu mobs,
who feared entering the country's insular Muslim communities...
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