Muslims’ resistance of the Genocide against the Tutsi

Inside Ecole Primaire Intwari in Nyamirambo, about two dozens of primary school pupils clad in black are performing dance drama to a 1994 Genocide against Tutsi commemoration song. This was on Friday May 27, during an event organized by the Rwanda Muslim Community to remember more than 80 former students and 12 teachers of the school who were killed during the Genocide. Among the mourners was one Jean Bosco Rutayisire who graduated from this Muslim-built school 57 years ago. He had been expelled from another school he was attending in 1959 because he was Tutsi. But he found a warm welcome at this school, which had a record to not discriminate, either ethnically or religiously. “My father was a good friend to Muslims. He then told me that I would go to study in the Swahili school,” Rutayisire said. While he and his family thought he would go to a boarding school after he had passed his primary leaving national exams with flying colours, Rutayisire did not find his name on the list of those going to any secondary school. After several months, his family decided to flee to DR Congo because violence against the Tutsi was getting out of hand, and so was state-sponsored discrimination. Rutayisire lived in DR Congo (then Zaire) for more than two decades until he decided to visit some of his relatives who still lived in Rwanda. On April 3, 1994, he arrived in Nyamirambo, a Muslim dominated neighbourhood which was also his place of birth, but everyone who knew him was asking why he, a Tutsi, would bother showing up. He wouldn’t understand until the Genocide started on April 7, and he had to jump from home to home of his Muslim brothers and eventually be lucky enough to sit on a bus that was evacuating Congolese back to their country. Nevertheless, while Rutayisire’s life was without doubt saved by his Muslim friends on several occasions for 16 days, he is only one and his story doesn’t clearly show the picture of Muslims’ resistance of the Genocide. Muslims are known to have largely resisted passively, by not taking part in the violence and killing, and actively, by protecting Tutsi refugees and themselves, and some even lost their lives in the process. This happened across the country. Some heart touching stories have surfaced after the Genocide, like one from a Mosque in Mabare Cell, Rubona Sector in Rwamagana District, where Muslims, including those who were Hutu, fought killers for days to protect hundreds of Tutsi refugees who had run to them for refuge. Some even lost their lives in the process. Another one is Yahaya Nsengiyumva who hid more than 30 people in his house in Nyamirambo and Zula Karuhimbi, an elderly woman who saved more than 100 in Ruhango district are also well-known. This, however, is believed to be a result of the fact that the Muslim leadership in Rwanda before 1994 had already taken its position, saying believers should not even be affiliated to any political parties that involved ideologies or actions counter to the teachings of the Quran. “In March 1992, the leadership of the Islam Community in Rwanda, after noticing that there were plans of the Genocide, urged in writing leaders of political parties and the government to stop discrimination,” Sheikh Salim Hitimana, the Mufti of Rwanda said at the Kwibuka 28 event. This was echoed by Sheikh Abdul Karim Harelimana, who told The New Times in an exclusive interview that in the early days of the Genocide, Sheikh Ahmed Mugwiza, the legal representative of the Muslim community (equivalent to the Mufti today) had a chance to preach at a Mosque in Nyamirambo, where he said that no Muslim should take part in the Genocide. “He told them that the Genocide was sin, and that no Muslim should kill anyone because of their ethnic group. Whoever committed the Genocide would have committed sin, and although some followed the preaching, others took part and even became notorious,” Harelimana added. A 2003 report titled; ‘Resistance and Protection: Muslim Community Actions During the Rwandan Genocide’ by Kristin Doughty and David Moussa Ntambara highlighted that there was a wide recognition by Muslims and non-Muslims in Rwanda that the vast majority of the Muslim community did not participate in the genocide, but rather acted positively, with many Hutu Muslims protecting Tutsi Muslims and non-Muslims. They even reported that while celebrating the appointment of the very first Muslim member of Cabinet in Rwanda in 1995, President Kagame made a public statement in recognition of the Muslim Community’s positive behaviour. “He said that Muslims in Rwanda did not participate in the genocide, and called upon them to ‘teach other Rwandans how to live together,’” the report says. There are other examples, however, that people kept highlighting as proof to the positive behaviour of the community. At the time this report was published, no Muslim religious leaders had been charged or arrested for participating in the Genocide, and no known people who sought refuge at mosques were killed with the collusion of the Muslim leadership, and this is still the case, 28 years later. It also came to light that a good number of survivors, both Muslim and non-Muslim, had been protected by Muslims from the killings. In the aftermath of the genocide, people realized that those who had hidden at mosques were more likely to have survived, and that many survivors had been protected by Muslims, according to the report. Until now, Muslim communities are known to be inclusive, despite a rough past where they were held in low regard, discriminated against and without rights.

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Muslims’ resistance of the Genocide against the Tutsi