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Originally posted by Ramo
I was reading an interesting article a while back. It was saying that in Rwanda's Muslims doubled in the past decade (to something like 15% of the population). The reason seems to be that a lot of the RCC in Rwanda was complicit in the genocide, while Muslim leaders did a lot to protect the Tutsis.
I was reading an interesting article a while back. It was saying that in Rwanda's Muslims doubled in the past decade (to something like 15% of the population). The reason seems to be that a lot of the RCC in Rwanda was complicit in the genocide, while Muslim leaders did a lot to protect the Tutsis.
"Though Muslims remain a small percentage of Rwanda's 8 million people, Islam is on the rise eight years after
the 1994 genocide brought 100 days of murder, terror
and mayhem. More than 500,000 minority Tutsis and
political moderates from the Hutu majority were killed
by Hutu militiamen, soldiers and ordinary citizens in
a slaughter orchestrated by the extremist Hutu
government then in power.
"For Hutus, conversion to Islam was like purification,
a way of getting rid of a stigma," Habimana said.
"After the genocide, Hutus felt that the society
perceives them as having blood on their hands."
Arab merchants trading in ivory and slaves introduced
Islam to Rwanda in the 18th century. The faith grew
after 1908 when waves of Muslims flowed in from
Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan at the beginning of
European colonial rule.
For nearly a century, Muslims remained on the fringes
of Rwandan society. The faithful in Kigali were
restricted to Biryogo, a dusty neighborhood where the
Al-Fatah mosque now stands. They needed permits to
leave.
During the genocide, Muslims were among the few
Rwandans who protected both neighbors and strangers.
Elsewhere, many Hutus hunted down or betrayed their
Tutsi neighbors and strangers suspected of belonging
to the minority."
and:
'RUHENGERI, Rwanda -- The villagers with their forest
green head wraps and forest green Korans arrived at
the mosque on a rainy Sunday afternoon for a lecture
for new converts. There was one main topic: jihad.
They found their seats and flipped to the right page.
Hands flew in the air. People read passages aloud. And
the word jihad -- holy struggle -- echoed again and
again through the dark, leaky room.
It wasn't the kind of jihad that has been in the news
since Sept. 11, 2001. There were no references to
Osama bin Laden, the World Trade Center or suicide
bombers. Instead there was only talk of April 6, 1994,
the first day of the state-sponsored genocide in which
ethnic Hutu extremists killed 800,000 minority Tutsis
and Hutu moderates.
"We have our own jihad, and that is our war against
ignorance between Hutu and Tutsi. It is our struggle
to heal," said Saleh Habimana, the head mufti of
Rwanda. "Our jihad is to start respecting each other
and living as Rwandans and as Muslims."
Since the genocide, Rwandans have converted to Islam
in huge numbers. 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.
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.
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.'
. The greatest evil about Islam IMO is its concept of family honour etc and how women are treated. It's medievil (I misspelled that on purpose. Clever, eh?). 
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