Rwandan Muslims and the Genocide. 2. “Good Muslims” vs “Bad Christians”?

Black-and-white depictions are rarely accurate. However, the idea that, as a community, Muslims fought against the genocide has more than a kernel of truth.

by Massimo Introvigne

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In the late 1980s, Ansar Allah split from the A.M.U.R. over government recognition and funding. The A.M.U.R. accused Ansar Allah of siding with the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi-led armed party), a potentially lethal accusation in Rwanda. Still, no evidence shows this was true. The movement, however, criticized A.M.U.R. leaders for supporting the authoritarian Hutu government.

In the final years of the Second Republic, when parties reemerged, some A.M.U.R. Muslims formed their own party, the Islamic Democratic Party (IDP). It favored dialogue with the RPF, which led to persecution during the genocide against the Tutsi and recognition after 1994, when it was renamed the Ideal Democratic Party, as confessional parties were forbidden. It secured seats in Parliament and even ministerial posts.

Meanwhile, the genocide against the Tutsi occurred. The “thesis of good Muslims versus bad Christians” during the genocide against the Tutsi has been thoroughly examined in the 2012 dissertation by political philosopher Richard Benda. This theory may help explain inflated statistics. In media accounts, both in Rwanda and internationally, it has been portrayed, in black-and-white terms, as a Muslim community uniformly opposing the genocide against the Tutsi, while many Christians shamefully participated in it.

Black-and-white portrayals are rarely accurate. Benda notes that several Muslims became well-known genocidaires. The most notorious was Hassan Ngeze (b. 1957), a practicing Muslim who, as editor of the extremist magazine “Kangura,” was responsible for publishing the infamous “Ten Commandments of the Hutu” and other incendiary articles and cartoons. Some of the most ferocious militia leaders, such as Omar Serushago (b. 1961), the first commander of the bloody Interahamwe militia who pleaded guilty before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and Yussuf Munyakazi (1935–2020), were also Muslims. It is also possible that some Muslim good deeds were exaggerated after the genocide against the Tutsi by some Rwandan media to present an unfavorable comparison to the Catholic Church.

On the other hand, Benda, drawing on a previous study by anthropologist Kristin Doughty and human rights activist David Moussa Ntambara, acknowledges that there is more than a kernel of truth to the thesis of the “good Muslims.” No leader of the Muslim community, as opposed to individual members, was charged as a genocidaire. Muslims mostly protected co-religionists but hunted non-Muslim Tutsi who sought refuge in the Islamic quarter of Kigali or in mosques and madrasas throughout the country, which were welcome. Many, and perhaps most, Muslims hid Tutsi in their homes and organized a sort of “underground railway” (to borrow a term used in the 19th century by those who helped fugitive slaves in the United States) to move them from one home to another. As a witness reported to Doughty and Ntambara, “You will find very few Muslims who did not hide others” during the genocide against the Tutsi.

Muslims did not necessarily embrace non-violence. Some organized an active and violent resistance to the genocidaires, based on the principle that terrorists can be terrorized. The Interahamwe militia was not known for its military prowess. They could torture and kill civilians, but when confronted by the advancing RPF army, they mostly fled. In Rwamagana, Eastern Province, Muslims organized a defense unit that kept the Interahamwe at bay, attacked and destroyed the home of a local genocidaire, and saved several Tutsi. In Kibagabaga, a neighborhood of Kigali, another Islamic defense group protected Tutsi, many of whom were not Muslims, who had gathered inside the mosque. They fended off the Interahamwe for three days before the Presidential Guard arrived with superior weapons and killed most of the Muslims and the Tutsi.

French political scientist Emmanuel Viret devoted a study to the case of Mabara, near Rwamagana, where a few families practiced Islam until the Ansar Allah Muslim Community sent missionaries from Kigali in the 1980s. They built a mosque and increased the number of Muslims, who were 187 on the eve of the genocide against the Tutsi. On April 13, 1994, the Interahamwe, coming from nearby Rubona, arrived in Mabara to kill the local Tutsi. Three hundred of them took refuge in the mosque. While most Christians joined the Interahamwe, the otherwise peaceful Ansar Allah Muslims organized barricades, and a “real battle” followed. But the Muslims fought with spears and stones, while the Interahamwe had come with guns. By evening, the assailants broke through the barricades, and 300 Muslims and Tutsi were killed. The Ansar Allah mosque was destroyed. Only three of the Mabara Muslims did not participate in the resistance. This led to quarrels between Ansar Allah and A.M.U.R. Muslims in Mabara after the genocide against the Tutsi, which unfortunately escalated into physical fights.

These incidents are relevant. There were a few cases of Tutsi armed resistance during the genocide against the Tutsi, but Muslims, who were mostly Hutu, fought other Hutu to protect the Tutsi. Many Tutsi perceived this prevailing Islamic attitude and, immediately upon hearing that massacres had begun in their cities, sought refuge in Muslim areas. Ultimately, I agree with Benda, an author critical of the unilateral “good Muslim” mythology, when he concludes that “as a general rule and collectively, Muslims opposed the genocide. Those among them who acted otherwise did so by breaking out of the community and entering in solidarity with non-Muslim elements. The Muslim community rightly felt that this was a kind of ‘apostasy.’”

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