shamsery
08-04-04, 03:12 PM
KIGALI, Rwanda When 800,000 of their Tutsi countrymen were slaughtered in a massacre that began 10 years ago this week, many Rwandans lost faith not only in their government but also in their religion. Today, in what is still a predominantly Roman Catholic country, Islam is the fastest-growing religion.
Many people, disgusted by the role some Catholic priests and nuns played in the genocide, have shunned organized religion altogether, and many more have turned to Islam.
"People died in my old church and the pastor helped the killers," said Yakobo Djuma Nzeyimana, 21, who became a Muslim in 1996. "I couldn't go back and pray there. I had to find something else."
Wearing a black prayer cap, Nzeyimana was one of nearly 2,000 worshippers at the Masdjid Al Fat'h last Friday. The crowd was so large that some Muslims set their prayer mats on the dirt outside the mosque and prayed in the midday heat.
The Muslim community now boasts so many converts that it has embarked on a campaign to construct mosques to accommodate all the faithful. There are about 500 mosques scattered throughout Rwanda, about double the number that existed a decade ago.
During the mass killing, militias had the place surrounded, but Hutu Muslims did not cooperate with the Hutu killers. They said they felt far more connected through religion than through ethnicity, and Muslim Tutsi were spared. "Nobody died in a mosque," said Ramadhani Rugema, executive secretary of the Muslim Association of Rwanda. "No Muslim wanted any other Muslim to die. We stood up to the militias. And we helped many non-Muslims get away." Rugema, a Tutsi, said he owed his life to a Muslim stranger who hid him in his home when members of the Interahamwe militia were pursuing him. Rugema said that two imams were arrested outside Kigali for participating in the massacre. But both were released within about two years for lack of evidence. "We are proud of how Islam emerged from the genocide," he said. For all the gains Islam has made, however, no one is suggesting that it is about to supplant Christianity as the country's dominant religion. Catholicism, which arrived in the late 19th century with the White Fathers order, remains deeply embedded in the culture. On Palm Sunday last weekend, worshippers on their way home from mass lined the roadways throughout Rwanda with fronds in their hands. They included people like Mediatrice Mukarutabana, who survived a slaughter in her church that she says has made her even more observant now. "God saved me," she said after the morning mass at Saint Francis Xavier Church in eastern Rwanda. "He was testing my faith. Since the genocide, I've been transformed. I can endure more now. I have more of a connection with God."
http://iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=513696
An article from International Herald Tribune. You may like it.
Many people, disgusted by the role some Catholic priests and nuns played in the genocide, have shunned organized religion altogether, and many more have turned to Islam.
"People died in my old church and the pastor helped the killers," said Yakobo Djuma Nzeyimana, 21, who became a Muslim in 1996. "I couldn't go back and pray there. I had to find something else."
Wearing a black prayer cap, Nzeyimana was one of nearly 2,000 worshippers at the Masdjid Al Fat'h last Friday. The crowd was so large that some Muslims set their prayer mats on the dirt outside the mosque and prayed in the midday heat.
The Muslim community now boasts so many converts that it has embarked on a campaign to construct mosques to accommodate all the faithful. There are about 500 mosques scattered throughout Rwanda, about double the number that existed a decade ago.
During the mass killing, militias had the place surrounded, but Hutu Muslims did not cooperate with the Hutu killers. They said they felt far more connected through religion than through ethnicity, and Muslim Tutsi were spared. "Nobody died in a mosque," said Ramadhani Rugema, executive secretary of the Muslim Association of Rwanda. "No Muslim wanted any other Muslim to die. We stood up to the militias. And we helped many non-Muslims get away." Rugema, a Tutsi, said he owed his life to a Muslim stranger who hid him in his home when members of the Interahamwe militia were pursuing him. Rugema said that two imams were arrested outside Kigali for participating in the massacre. But both were released within about two years for lack of evidence. "We are proud of how Islam emerged from the genocide," he said. For all the gains Islam has made, however, no one is suggesting that it is about to supplant Christianity as the country's dominant religion. Catholicism, which arrived in the late 19th century with the White Fathers order, remains deeply embedded in the culture. On Palm Sunday last weekend, worshippers on their way home from mass lined the roadways throughout Rwanda with fronds in their hands. They included people like Mediatrice Mukarutabana, who survived a slaughter in her church that she says has made her even more observant now. "God saved me," she said after the morning mass at Saint Francis Xavier Church in eastern Rwanda. "He was testing my faith. Since the genocide, I've been transformed. I can endure more now. I have more of a connection with God."
http://iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=513696
An article from International Herald Tribune. You may like it.