The research that undergirded this thesis pursued three main objectives: (a) to map the root causes a century of tensions between Christianity and Islam in Rwanda; (b) to explore Christian and Islamic principles for peaceful coexistence; (c) to offer perspectives of dialogue, healing and reconciliation of memories.
Chapter one offers a concise overview of the history of Rwanda and its population as well as the background of interreligious relations in Rwanda as it is marked by the taboo issue or what has been recently called “the untold story”6 of Arab slave trade. We contend that this trade is one of the root causes of tensions and conflict between Christians and Muslims in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It is also a cause of mistrust between black Africans and Arabs.
The second chapter of this thesis is entitled “Historical Perspectives on the encounter between Traditional Religion, Christianity, and Islam in Rwanda”, seeks to clarify the influence of Traditional Religion on the history of Christianity in relation to Arab slave trade; it also establishes a link between Arab traders, the expansion of Islam and the establishment of White Fathers in the areas where slave trade was intense and where were implanted important Muslim communities as a result of it. This was the case of Eastern African cities and villages such as Mombasa, Zanzibar, Bagamoyo, Tabora, Ujiji, Nyanza-lac, Rumonge. The Scottish missionary David Livingston 1813-1873 testified to the horror of slavery in East Africa in these words:
The spectacle that I had under my eyes, common incidents of this human traffic, it is a horror that I constantly endeavor to hunt from my memory, but in vain. The most painful
6 The Arab Muslim slave trade of Africans, the untold story, <www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwtTSa1BvLI>, 05th November 2013.
memories blot out itself with me; but the atrocious stages that I saw come back, and in night they make me bound, horrified by the vivacity of the picture.7
Finally, the second chapter clarifies the circumstances in which the White Fathers missionaries fought and marginalized Islam in Rwanda: they arrived in Rwanda coming from Uganda, where they had experienced religious conflicts between Muslims and Christians, and between Catholics and Protestants; they had gained a long experience of resistance to Arab trade of slaves in Algeria and in the East African Region; they were working and moving with the Middle Age crusade memory.
In the words of Gerard Van‟t Spijker, “the first missionaries who arrived in Africa had a heritage of the Middle Age conflicts in Europe and their first motive of evangelization was effectively the fight against Islam.”8 Professor Gerrie ter Haar admitted also that “Crusades and Arab slave trade are part of the historical memory which influences relations between Muslims and Christians up to this day.”9
This explains why one of the missionary priorities of White Fathers in Rwanda was to prevent the expansion of Islam in that small heart of African landlocked country. In their view, “Islam was inspired by the spirit of evil.”10
In this journey of research for peaceful coexistence between Christian and Muslim communities in Rwanda, we cannot overlook Rwandan Traditional Religion. It will be of paramount importance to bring out the tenets of the Rwandan practices in terms of reconciliation and peace building. Christianity and Islam arrived in Rwanda at the end of 19th century; they found that Rwandan Traditional Religion was already present. This research brings out its relation with both new religions in Rwanda and how Traditional Religion influenced both. It is important to clarify it because Traditional Religion was “a social trait which made cohesion of Rwandan society”11 It is always present in the mind of Rwandans with Christian and Muslim ideas and “exerts probably the greatest predominance upon the thinking and living of the people concerned.”12
7 David Livingstone, Last Journal, vol.11, p.212.
8 Cf. Conférence donnée au premier séminaire islamo-chrétien au Rwanda, Septembre 1998 à Kabusunzu.
9 Gerrie ter Haar and James J. Busuttil, Ibid, p.5.
10 J.-H. Kagabo, Ibid p. 21.
11 Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, Ed. Fountain Publishers, Kampala, 1994, p.13.
12 John Mbiti, African religions and philosophy, Heinemann, London, 1969, p1.
I tried to understand why the Tutsi kings of Rwanda were close to Muslims and the consequences of such open defiance to a colonial system where the Roman Catholic Church was a dominant force both politically and religiously. In fact, this will be my second argument of the root cause of violence in Rwanda. When the Tutsi kingdom was abolished in 1959, the Tutsi ethnic group and Muslims were marginalized and oppressed by a new political system which was openly under the influence of Roman Catholic Church. The Primate of the Church, Archbishop
“André Perraudin”13, was a government maker of Rwanda.
The chapter three, “Religion and violence”, I analyzed the crusades and Jihad, as part of the historical memory of people in the Muslim and the Christian worlds, influencing relations between believers of both religions even to this day.14 I inspected the statement of a White Father Serge Moussa Traoré, who argued that: “Religions failed in solving or preventing the conflicts in the world in large part because many perpetrators of violence and conflict are themselves, believers”.15 I included evidence of the violent role played by religions in the Genocide against Tutsi and other conflicts in Rwanda, and importance to clearly identify the presence of violence, its seeds, and its deepest causes in preventing future violence in Rwanda. In the analysis, I considered the importance of being careful in showing the link between the factors and positions of the two major religious communities, whether they were part of the problem or of the solution with regard in sources of these conflicts.
In chapter four, I demonstrated that from religious dogma, it is possible to raise a non-violent coexistence and reconciliation between religions, peoples, races and different ethnic groups.
Thus, I entitled that chapter “Healing and Reconciliation of Memories.” Healing of memories is one of the tasks challenging various religious traditions.16 The first step to create a new life after violent atrocities where children, women and men were suffered and, were killed, is to heal
13 André Perraudin (1914- 1990) was born at Cotterg, Vallée de Bagnes in Switzerland. He worked in Roman Catholic Church of Rwanda as Bishop and Archbishop from 1950 to 1990.
14 Gerrie ter Haar, and James j. Busuttil, Bridge or barrier: Religion, violence and visions for peace, Brill, Leiden, Nederlands, 2005, p.5.
15 Traoré S.M., The truth in Islam according to the official teaching of the Catholic Church, Ed.
L‟Harmattan, Paris, 2010, p.240.
16 Gerrie ter Haar, Ibid, p.5.
memories. That process of healing is an important instrument to use for overcoming any kind of violence and to prevent it in the future. Therefore the different religions have to work together on that real need of healing memory in a Rwanda where many people were traumatized by the 1994 genocide against Tutsi and its consequences. Coming together, as believers of faith, along with all organizations in charge of healing memories like the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide, and the National Commission of Unity and Reconciliation, can help to heal memories. For the major faith communities in Rwanda, it is “an act of courage and humility in recognizing the wrongs done by those who have borne or bear the name of Christian or Islam.”17 Interreligious dialogue “is one way of recalling together times of communities living in peace with each other but also offers space for listening people recounting their stories and experiences repleted with painful memories of controversy.”18
Finally, this study is to serve Rwanda, as a wounded society, and it will be looked from a Christian perspective. Although I am not educated in Islam but having had profound encounters with Muslims in many interreligious Christian-Muslim dialogues, I offer also some reflections from Islam and Christian perspectives on healing wounds and memories.
17 Traoré S.M., Ibid, quoted Jean Paul II, incarnationis Mysterium,11, p. 230.
18 Ucko Hans, When you get to the edge of the Abyss, step back, in Current dialogue No 49, July 2007, pp:23-26, p:23.
SECTION I:
RWANDA AND THE ENCOUNTER BETWEEN TRADITIONAL RELIGION, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM
Chapter I. RWANDAN HISTORY AND POPULATION Introduction
Rwanda is a small land-locked country situated in the Great lakes Region of Central-East Africa, with 11.5 million people living on 26.338 Square kilometers. “The population density has increased from 321 persons per sq.km in 2002 to 416 in 2012 at the national level. It is the highest density in the East African Region and quite high compared to other countries globally.”19The Rwandan population is expected to increase to about 16 million by 2020.20 Rwanda is located in Central/Eastern Africa, and is bordered by the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west,
19The provisional results of the 4th population and housing census of Rwanda, < http://www.gov.rw/The- provisional-results-of-the-4th-Population-and-Housing-Census-of-Rwanda-as-of-census-night-August-15th-2012-give-a-total-resident-population-of-10-537-222-people>, 30th March 2014.
20 Rwanda vision 2020, <http://www.gesci.org/assets/files/Rwanda_Vision_2020.pdf>, 02nd April 2014.
Uganda to the north, Tanzania to the east, and Burundi to the south as it can be seen below:
Tharcisse Gatwa, a Rwandan author, explains that “these three social groups who belonged to the same culture and civilization began to be divided into ethnic and racial categories which led, many times during the twentieth century to unbelievable violence in 1959, 1963, and 1973.”25 However, in 1994, Rwanda had endured an unprecedented genocide of Tutsi where approximately 1 million people were killed in one hundred days.
This chapter seeks firstly to investigate the root causes and key roles of religions in violence from the perspective of external influences of Rwanda at the end of 19th century with explorers, colonizers, Arabs, and missionaries. “In the history of Rwanda, myths, historical legends, the
21 Rwanda hope, <http://www.rwandahope.com/rwandaHistory.htm>, 02nd April 2014.
22 The Batwa are one of the Rwanda‟s three ethnic groups. They make up only the number about 35.000, less than 0,4%. The most pressing issue facing the Batwa is land ownership, intrinsically linked to their right to
movement, residence and protection of property. The semi-nomadic lifestyle of Batwa with its forest-based existence is not conducive to the land regime in Rwanda which does not recognize them right to the land on which they live. 91% have no formal education. The Batwa have the highest incidences of poverty and lowest access to social services of all Rwandans. See UNPO web site, introduction according to the UN, the population of Rwanda. They are recognizable by anybody who speaks Kinyarwanda language because they have a distinct accent as far as tone intonations are concerned. Rwandan culture has a lot of jokes about Batwa which ridicule them as being dumb, naïve, and stupid. They are entertainers: clowns, singers, and dancers. See Alexandre Kimenyi, The Batwa language: studies in cultural survival, language preservation and ethnic identity.
<http://www.kimenyi.com/The%20Batwa%20Languag1[1].pdf>. From 1970, Rwanda governments evicted thousands of the Batwa from their homes at Nyungwe forest and from the Volcanoes National Park for
conservation and tourism commercial projects, and gave to them little or no compensation. See Nick Ashdown, Rwanda’s invisible people, <http://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/rwandas-invisible-people/>.
23 The Bantu linguistic group covers an area from South Cameroon to almost the whole Southern Africa, including then Eastern and Central Africa. This is a family of hundreds of languages whose number of speakers is close to 220 million ( See <http://www.bantu-languages.com/en/bantu_intro.html>, 01st March 2016).
24 Countries and their cultures, <http://www.everyculture.com/No-Sa/Rwanda.html>, 02nd April 2014.
25 Tharcisse Gatwa, The Churches and Ethnic Ideology in the Rwandan Crises 1900-1994, Regnum Books International, 2005, p.3.
cultural universe and religious of imandwa (spirits), and the dynamism of dynasties and clans played big roles in the affirmation of the kingdom of Rwanda.”26 Secondly, the first white peoples to arrive in Rwanda through colonization and evangelization, read the history of Rwanda through “the hamitic myth and with diagrams of the European feudal history.”27Thirdly, as said Emile Mworoha, Professor of History at University of Burundi, it is not possible to penetrate the pre-colonial monarchical facts in Rwanda in ignoring the system of clans and the different social categories.28
1.1. Origin of the Rwandan Kingdom
The origin of the Rwandan kingdom is known through oral stories, myths, and legends. It is Gihanga Ngomijana who apparently begun and founded the Rwandan kingdom and the Banyiginya royal dynasty clan from a place called Gasabo near lake Muhazi in the western part of Rwanda. “It is him who introduced the cow and the drum, (Gihanga cyahanze inka n’ingoma) fire, and religion.”29 It was at the end 10th and beginning of 11th century. He ruled Rwanda from his palace in the forest of “Buhanga.”30 Ian Vansina confirms that, Gihanga never was an historical figure even if Rwandans believed, and still believe that he was a living king.31
According to one of the legends from Rwandan oral tradition, King Gihanga is the father of the three ancestors of all Rwandans: Gatwa, father of the Twa, Gahutu, father of the Hutus and Gatutsi, father of the Tutsis.32 In Rwandan tradition, “the king was treated as a semi-divine being, believed to have come from heaven. He was a source of life and symbol of unity for the
26 Emile Mworoha, L‟Etat monarchique et son emprise sur la société dans la région des Grands Lacs au XIXème siècle, in Histoire sociale de l’Afrique de l’Est (XIXe-Xxe siècle), Karthala, 1991, p. 37, pp.37-58.
27 Ibid 28 Ibid
29 Bernadin Muzungu, Histoire du Rwanda Pre-coloniale, Ed. l‟Harmattan, Paris, 2003,p. 72.
30 Scholars have said that Buhanga is in Musanze Distict (former Ruhengeri near the Mukungwa river) However, other reseach says that Buhanga was in today‟s Gicumbi District(former Byumba). There are a grave people in Nyamirembe where residents believe that is was a grave of a King. Gihanga was buried in Nyamirembe in the South of Buhanga II. See <http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/article/2007-09-08/78219/>, 01st March 2016.
31 Jan Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda, Ed. The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, p53, quoted A.Kagame, Abrege1,41.
32 African creation myths, <http://skyview.vansd.org/bquestad/myth/africa/creation1.htm>, 28th April 2014.
nation.”33 The symbol of the royal power was a sacred drum called Kalinga which was accorded the same respect as the king.34
1.1.1. Pre-colonial time
In Pre-colonial times, Africa was divided into many kingdoms with diversified populations speaking more than 800 different languages. African kingdoms “favored oral tradition and few possessed written languages.”35 There were more than ten thousand states and kingdoms before the arrivals of Europeans. 36 In Rwanda, it was a similar reality;
From the 15th century, the clans began to coalesce into kingdoms. By 1700, approximately eight kingdoms existed in present-day Rwanda, the largest ones being Bugesera, Gisaka, the northern part of Burundi, and the early kingdom of Rwanda. The kingdom of Rwanda, ruled by the Tutsi Nyiginya dynasty, became increasingly dominant from the mid-eighteenth century, as the kings centralized power and expanded the kingdom militarily, taking control of several smaller kingdoms. The kingdom reached its greatest extent during the nineteenth century under the reign of King Kigeli IV Rwabugiri (1853–1895).37
The political structure of Pre-colonial Africa was decentralized in certain parts and centralized in other parts. But Rwanda in particular
Was a highly centralized kingdom presided over by Tutsi kings who hailed from one ruling clan. The king was supreme, he ruled through three categories of chiefs, cattle chiefs, land chiefs, and military chiefs. The chiefs were predominantly, but not exclusively, Batutsi, especially the cattle and military chiefs. While the relationship between the king and the rest of the population was unequal, the
33 Julius O. Adekunde, Culture and Customs of Rwanda, Greenwood Press, London, 2007, p.7.
34 Ibid
35 Toyin Falola and Tayler Fleming, African civilization, <http://www.eolss.net/sample-chapters/c04/e6-97-09.pdf>, 20th June 2016.
36 Ibid.
37 History of Musanze, <http://www.musanze.com/history-of-musanze/>, 24th April 2013.
relationship between the ordinary Bahutu, Batutsi and Batwa was one of mutual benefit mainly through the exchange of their labour.38
Working activities were well divided. Tutsi pastoralists were cattle keepers, aborozi, whereas Hutu were agriculturalists, abahinzi. Twa were pottery workers, ababumbyi. “For exchanging product through barter trade with one another, there were also wood workers, textile workers for bark cloth, metal workers, medicine men, magicians, musicians…”39 It is reported that, “Bahutu, Batutsi and Batwa, lived in symbiotic harmony in using same language, same culture, and same territory.”40 But the Rwandan historian Déogratias Byanafashe argues that history indicates some violent crisis of succession as the extermination of the Abagerekas 1868-1869, the murder of Murorunkwere 1876-1880, the death of Nyirimigabo 1885-1887/8. The one better known is the tragic coup d‟état of Rucunshu.41
1.1.2. The tragedy coup d’état of Rucunshu in 189642
This crisis intervenes as to close the crises of the old Rwanda; it is one of the last with the reign of King Kigeli IV Rwabugili. The“Rucunshu”43 crisis was opposed, in a classic case of rivalry and competition for the throne which ended up in favour of opponents to King Rwabugiri. It means that it opposed supporters of the throne, represented by Rutalindwa, son of Queen Murorunkwere, the first wife of the king,“who was chosen in 1889 to replace his father”44, and those of Queen Kanjogera, second wife King Rwabugili, who wanted to enthrone her son, Musinga.
The war of Rucunshu in December 1896 happened between two politically very influential lineages: the royal lineage of the Banyiginya-Bahindiro and the matri-dynastic lineage of the Bega-bakagara that mobilized each of the partisans in the whole Rwanda. It was of short length
38 Official website of Rwandan government, <http://www.gov.rw/PRE-COLONIAL>, 24th April 2014 39 In 2 East Africa Reporter, Museveni’s speech during the 20th commemoration of genocide,
<http://in2eastafrica.net/musevenis-speech-during-the-20th-genocide-commemoration/>, 11th May 2014.
40 Official website of Rwandan government, <http://www.gov.rw/PRE-COLONIAL>, 24th April 2014
41 Déogratias Byanafashe, Rwanda Ruptures du capital social multiséculaire et genocide, Ed. CLE, Yaoundé, 2004, pp46-48.
42 Ibid.
43 Runcunshu is located in sector of Nyamabuye in Muhanga District.
44 Ian Linden, Chrsitianisme et Pouvoirs au Rwanda, 1900-1990, Ed.Karthala. Paris, 1990, p.46.
for about one afternoon, but extremely murderess and violent. It ended in favour of Queen Kanjogera and her son Musinga Umwega-umwakagara and Umunyiginya-umuhindiro after having finished by dividing Rwanda in two irreconcilable factions: the faction of the Banyiginya and the faction of the Bega.
The repercussions of this fratricide war will agitate Rwanda until 1912 with the revolt of the legitimate Ndungutse and even subsequently with the inexpiable enmities between chief Kayondo, brother in law of King Musinga and Rudahigwa (Musinga‟s son and king of Rwanda
The repercussions of this fratricide war will agitate Rwanda until 1912 with the revolt of the legitimate Ndungutse and even subsequently with the inexpiable enmities between chief Kayondo, brother in law of King Musinga and Rudahigwa (Musinga‟s son and king of Rwanda