Polygamy

Polygamy is a practice generally rejected by Christian churches. However, some African administrations tolerate it. From 1950, the Rwandan constitution forbids polygamy. As a country with a Christian majority, monogamy is the official form of marriage. In Rwanda, political officers encourage the civil marriage, and in the last ten years, polygamy has been tracked rigorously. It was pointed out as main cause of conflict in family, land conflicts; “especially when it comes to matters of succession, land ownership and financial matters.”⁴¹⁵

In April 2006, the mayors of districts committed before the president of the Republic to get married civilly the quasi-totality of all homes under their control and to give an official statute to these unions. The objective was also to valorize the monogamous marriage, the only marriage officially recognized by the constitution. In all over the country, couples are united in mass by political administrative.⁴¹⁶

Christianity and Polygamy

414 Ibid.

415 Marie Brigitte Kabalira, Rwanda polygamy, <http://allafrica.com/stories/201206200638.html>, 24th April 2016.

416 Grands lacs info, <http://www.syfia-grands-lacs.info/index.php5?view=articles&action=voir&idArticle=382 >

20th November 2011.

Polygamy is the cause of a wide divergence between Traditional Religion and Christianity. But even if the majority of African Christian churches have refused to recognize polygamy within the African context, it stills a burning theological debate. Some African theologians like Chukwuemeka Nze from Nigeria, consider that “the insistence of Christianity on monogamy is an arbitrary imposition without adequate consideration of the raison d'être of the traditional institution of polygamy which sustains the extended family patterns and assures continuity, the bedrock of the traditional ancestral worship.”⁴¹⁷

In Rwanda, Christian churches requested of their members to marry and to live with only one wife. Those who lived with more than one wife demanded to do the same instead of being excluded from different activities of the Church. A Rwandan Christian fallen in the polygamy delivered probably to a missionary this sincere reflection: “you ask me to repudiate my wives supernumeraries and, on the same time, you exclude me from the holy communion where would I find strength to accomplish the required separation; you are lack of logic.”⁴¹⁸

Polygamy in Rwandan culture

Most of the time polygamy was practiced by rich Rwandans. They did not fear to have many children, because having children was a sign of richness, power and consideration in the society.

In the case of conflict, a big family numerically inspires respect, fear, and intimidates rivals.⁴¹⁹ In Rwanda there were various reasons for becoming polygamous:

 During a period of sickness, a witch could declare to the patient that, the big father, previously polygamous, suffers from nothing but the man didn't follow their habits and customs, so the family worries about it. If someone need to be healed, it is necessary to take to their intention another wife.

 Facing the death of a father or a brother, the family looks for husbands who are closer relatives for these widows. In Rwandan culture there were neither widows nor orphans.

417 Chukwuemeka Nze, The influence of Christian values on culture, < http://www.crvp.org/book/Series02/II- 3/chapter_x.htm>, 11th November 2011.

418 Alexandre Arnoux,Ibid, p.142.

419 Ibid., p.38.

 Having a large land, the rich landowner needs more people to work in the field and the way of solving the problem is to marry many wives to produce children who will work in the land.

 A handicap or disease which does not permit the wife to work and to take care his family, pushes the man to marry a second wife.

 A woman‟s sterility or the absence of a son who would perpetuate the family and who will assure the cult of ancestors, allows a second marriage. In this case sometimes it's the woman who takes the initiative to ask his husband for a second wife, because human sterility is a shame in Africa.

 Sterility is considered as a malediction on the African continent. A woman without children is neglected and constantly humiliated. The main objective of an African marriage is essentially to have children. The man who married a sterile woman sees himself advised by the surrounded people and the extended family to choose a new wife.⁴²⁰ A man without child is also a malediction. Jean Marc Ela in his book Ma foi d’Africain emphases that an African doesn't fear death, but he is frightened to die without a child and the absence of boys is in particular the worse of the maledictions.⁴²¹

An African will do wherever is possible, even if it is for contracting more than one marriages in the goal of obtaining descendants especially boys. The African culture forgets that a man can be sterile like a woman. There is also the wish of “some ancestor spirits who ask for mystic wives.”⁴²²In Rwandan culture, it believed that ancestor spirits satisfy their needs as it was in their living time. They eat, drink, and claim to get living spouses.

420 Ijere, Sembene Ousmane et l’institution polygamique, <http://ethiopiques.refer.sn/spip.php?page=imprimer- article&id_article=1330>, 09th November 2011.

421 Jean Marc Ela, Mafoi d’Africain,

<http://books.google.rw/books?id=fEIuTvaUJgkC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=mourir+sans+enfant+une+maledicti on+en+afrique&source=bl&ots=HpJbim7LLn&sig=7XgLV0D1vBBFY5bw1pZjJSmaEvg&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f

=false>, 09th Novembre 2011, p.38.

422 Aloys Bigirumwami, Ibid., p.153.

Polygamy in Islam

A lot of old literature confirms that “polygamy existed before the advent of Islam among several civilizations and religions.”⁴²³ King Salomon had 1000 wives (1Kings 11:3). One of the main reasons of Islam to authorize, restrict, and organize polygamy, is to take care of abandoned and widowed women who find a solution to their situation; however polygamy in Islam is submitted to some important conditions:

 The wife(s) has the full objection about polygamy during or before the marriage contract.

And if the husband disregards that, the wife has the right to raise that to the Islamic court.⁴²⁴

 Equitable and just treatment is for all the wives.⁴²⁵

 The number of wives is not to exceed four.⁴²⁶

It is understandable that Islam did not react against polygamy which was one of the elements of the Rwandan culture. The first protestant missionaries in Rwanda and some Christian couples were destabilized because of the teachings of Islam on polygamy. It is reported that one Muslim trader, especially at Kirinda in Karongi District, who was living near the sacred forest at the beginning of 20th century, was making propaganda for the Islamic religion and ethics. He recommended polygamy to Rwandans. That is why the Protestant missionary named Roseler asserted that Islam would be destroying Christian ethics in supporting polygamy. For him, Islam has no respect for woman; it encourages men to marry many wives and to beat them if they do not want to obey their husband.⁴²⁷

This was one of the first contradictions that appeared in the Muslim and Christian coexistence.

Polygamy in Islam is one of the important common elements shared with the African Traditional Religion. The Ghanaian Professor John Azumah confirms it in saying that “Islam has a lot of

423 Introduction to Islam, <http://www.unityunitarian.org/uploads/6/1/0/3/6103699/islam_lesson_8.pdf>, 29th July 2016.

424 Polygamy in Islam, <http://islamology.com/Overview/Women/Polygamy%20in%20Islam.htm>, 9th November 2011.

425 Ibid.

426 Ibid.

427 Michel Twagirayesu et Jan Van Butselaar, Ibid, p.58.

similarities with the traditional African worldview, making it less difficult for Africans to convert to Islam.”⁴²⁸ Islam is more tolerant, accommodating and flexible to traditional African socio-religious values.⁴²⁹ “In the All African Conference of Churches (AACC) report on its 1969 assembly in Abidjan, observed that Islam is held in Africa to be an African religion, with almost no foreign missionaries, which tolerates African traditions.”⁴³⁰ The assembly stated this as a fact that should challenge the Church in Africa into a search for cultural and liturgical forms through which we can express our Christian faith.⁴³¹ The statement continued, “There can be no disputing to the fact that African Muslim practices are replete with indigenous African elements like fetishism and animism. However, what we are not sure of is whether the initiative can be attributed to the generosity and flexibility of Arab-Islam.”⁴³²

Muslim women and polygamy in Rwanda

⁴³³

Today Muslim women react against polygamy in Rwanda. The Muslim women of Rwanda, long time subjected to the polygamy have endured martyrdom in the name of the faith. They ask strong and high lobby for respect of the law which allows only a monogamous marriage. The implementation of the law will help them to blossom in their homes. It is Muslim women of Rwamagana, in Eastern Province of Rwanda, that have broken the silence. They asked their husbands to respect the Constitution of Rwanda which only recognizes the monogamous marriage. Behind this, Muslim women have fear of different sexual diseases. As the VIH/AIDS kills many people and where each is called to control the number births of Rwanda, polygamy cannot be supported anymore. Very often these women who live in situation of polygamy, are suspected to resort often to sorcery, either to move away a bothersome rival, or to attract themselves to their husband, without sharing, the husband's attention.⁴³⁴

428 John A. Azumah, Ibid., p.34, quoted Mazrui, Triple Heritage, pp.136-43.

429 Ibid., p.34.

430 Ibid, Quoted, Engagement: The second AACC Assembly-Abidjan 69 (Nairobi: AACC, 1970), p.117.

431 Ibid.

432 Ibid., p.7.

433 Archive, <http://www.no-mejliss.com/archive/index.php/t-

17986.html?s=4428b929e8008175b2eaa32f454e888e>, 22nd November 2011.

434 José H. Kagabo, Ibid, p.146.

Polygamy constitutes one of the main sources of domestic conflicts. One Muslim woman said that: “A man who has sexual intercourses with three or four wives can easily propagate transmissible sexual diseases or give to unwanted births with a lot of consequences.” ⁴³⁵ The former Muslim representative of Kigali region, Cheikh Souleyman Byagusetsa, said in the same way that “the present standard of living in Rwanda doesn't permit to take more than one wife in respecting what the Qur'an recommends.”⁴³⁶ For him, the civil law which allows a monogamous marriage is clear for avoiding all attempt of dishonesty towards the women and the children.

2.8.10. Concept of Umma and Rwandan tradition⁴³⁷

The Arabic language designates the Muslim community by the term Umma. The Umma has a great importance, like the one of blood and of the ethnic group. It is a fundamental concept in Islam which played its role when Muhammad fled Mecca to Medina in 622 CE where he founded the Muslim community. The Umma contains the whole Muslim world in which the believers spoke different languages, coming from all horizons, and having multiple cultures. “A new solidarity within the Muslim community replaces the village and tribal solidarities without changing the laws and habits of life of the particular group.”⁴³⁸ Anyone who believes in the one God and professes that Muhammad is his messenger is part of the Umma, the community of Muhammad. It is a deep will of living together which fits well with the Rwandan tradition of living and sharing everything. “Living in community is a fundamental concept for anyone who wants to formulate the African conception of human.”⁴³⁹

The Umma implies solidarity and hospitality among Muslims. In all the country there are some cities recognized to be Muslim cities where Muslims live and work together in their daily life.

This is also observable in other African countries. In Rwanda, many people were converted to Islam because they were welcomed into the Muslim community. “The primary motive in joining

435 Sixth Christian and Muslim seminar in Rwanda, 2006.

436 Ibid.

437 Ndayizeye M.Olivier, Chrétiens et Musulmans pour une coexistence pacifique au Rwanda, Mémoire de licence, Faculté de Théologie Protestante de Butare 2002, p. 21,22.

438 Josef Stamer, Islam and African traditional religion, <http://www.mamiwata.com/islam.html>, 21st October 2011.

439 Gerard van‟t Spijker, Ibid, p.186.

Islam is the desire to belong to a community,”⁴⁴⁰because “an African is a human existing in community.”⁴⁴¹ For understanding of the African drives toward a community, and in most ethnic and cultural groups in the African continent;

There is an eloquent expression of the sense of interdependence between the community and the individual: I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am. In traditional life, the individual does not and cannot exist alone except corporately. He owes his existence to other people, including those of past generations and his contemporaries. He is simply part of the whole. The community must therefore make, create or produce the individual; the individual depends on the corporate group. ⁴⁴²

The Umma insists on a unity given by faith in Allah revealed by the Prophet Muhammad. Every Muslim is supposed to be the guard of the community. For example, a Muslim can undertake a long journey in several regions and is to be welcomed, sheltered fraternally everywhere by the members of his community. This is what L.Gardet calls “values of unity and solidarity in Islam.”⁴⁴³ The fact of feeling united as children of a same “mother”, encouraged Muslims to not kill each other during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Bukhari states that in Umma a believer is the brother of a believer. He protects his loses and guards his flank. A Muslim is a brother of a Muslim. Do not oppress him or betray him. Whoever attends to the needs of his brother, God attends to his own needs, and whoever relieves the pain of Muslim, God will relieve him of his pains on the day of resurrection. ⁴⁴⁴ For strengthening the spirit of community, there are some laws insisting on the respect of not bloodshed. “The blood shed of a Muslim is forbidden except in three cases; the adulterer who is stoned, one who kills another, and one who apostatize.”⁴⁴⁵

440 Josef Stamer, Islam and African traditional religion, Ibid.

441 Gerard van‟t Spijker, Ibid, p.186, quoted G.M.Setiloane, “Christus heute bekennen aus der afrikanischen Sicht von Mensch und Gesellschaft”, Zeitschrift fur mission II, 1976, pp22s.

442 John Mbiti, African concepts of time,< http://www.spiritualsproject.org/sweetchariot/Literature/time.php >, 18th March 2010.

443 L.Gardet, L’islam Religion et Communauté, Ed. Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1967, p. 94.

444 Reuven Firestone, Jihad , The origin of holy war in Islam, Oxford University Press, NewYork, 1999, p.125-129, quoted Bukhari, K.al-mazalim, 4.622 (vol.3,p.373; Abu Dawud, K.Al-muákhat, 4893(vol.4, p.2750; Tirmidhi, K.al- hudud, 3.1425 (vol.4, p.26).

445 Reuven Firestone, Ibid, quoted Ibn Maja, K.al-hudud, 1.2533 (vol.2, p.847.)

The institution of the Umma, the formal unification of the Medinan community, is a result of the social-spiritual leadership of Muhammad. As the result of these factors, the believer and their non-Muslim associates in the Umma felt a growing sense of solidarity, which transcended traditional kinship boundaries and the concept of Umma strengthened the leadership of Muhammad.⁴⁴⁶

2.8.11. Friendships between Muslims and Rwanda’s Kings

After Rwanda´s King Yuhi Musinga´s death in deportation in 1931, “enemy number one of Christianity”⁴⁴⁷ in the Democratic Republic of Congo, precisely in Moba/Shaba because he refused to become a Christian, his son King Mutara Rudahirwa maintained very close bonds with Muslims even after he had been baptized in the Roman Catholic Church of Nyanza on 27^th October 1946.

In 1959 King Mutara Rudahirwa was assassinated in Bujumbura (Burundi) where he stayed for a short visit. His death was the beginning of what Rwandan people call the revolution of 1959, when killings of Tutsis and the burning of their houses started. Between 150.000 and 200.000 inhabitants of the Tutsi ethnic group exiled to neighboring countries of Rwanda, and some succeeded to escape death through the help of Muslims who accepted to hide them or to offer them transportation into safer regions, in their capacity as private taxi drivers. According to an analysis by Rwanda‟s Mufti, Habimana Saleh, several reasons explain this attitude of Muslims to help people in danger. “One is because Islam teaches that you must help a person who needs help and safeguard his/her life if that person does not threaten you.”⁴⁴⁸

The perception was propagated that Muslims are supporting Tutsis, which resulted in the marginalization of Muslims on two levels in the period between 1959 and 1994. Politically, both Hutu governments which succeeded one another in 1959 and 1973, discriminated Muslims from

446 Ibid.

447 Th. Gatwa, A.Karamaga, Les autres chrétiens rwandais, Ed.Urwego, Kigali, 1990, p. 32.

448 Jean-François Mayer, Poignant reportage du Génocide Rwandais, < http://www.mejliss.com/showthread.php?p=4031906>, 18th June 2009.

1959 to 1994, a period in which no Muslim was represented in the government. Religiously, Muslims were denigrated by Christians in considering them as people who were lost because they do not confess Jesus Christ. Also they were officially denied admission in different Christian schools.

Conclusion

The slave trade influenced Christians and Muslims relations in all East African Region.

Unfortunately there is a deep silence around the theme on both sides. Christians are uncomfortable to talk about the consequences of the White Fathers history of fighting against Islam. Muslims are also embarrassed about the history of Arab trade of slaves in East Africa.

There is a need of healing of memories, which will be developed in the fourth chapter.

Converting Rwandans into Islamic and Christian believes was a complex task, because they were rooted in Rwandan Traditional Religion. Rwandan Traditional Religion cannot separated from Rwandan culture. According to Peter Sarpong, this means that:

It is not possible to study African culture in isolation from religion. Religion permeates the ideal African from cradle to grave. African Traditional Religion, therefore, comes into play in the shaping of the African's future. We have to know the past in order to understand the present and to be better equipped to plan the future. We cannot know the past of the African if we neglect his religion.

Traditional Religion is part of the African's ethos and an understanding of it should go hand in hand with Christian evangelization.⁴⁴⁹

I parallel, the understanding of Traditional Religion should go also hand in hand with Islamic dawa, which is one way of spreading Islam.

Even after an intensive missionary work, Traditional Religion is still exerting much influence on Rwandans. Those who are converted to Christianity or to Islam return at certain moments of their lives to some aspects of the Traditional Religion practices. The spiritual richness of responding to the daily worries attracts many Africans. However the proximity between Traditional Religion

449 Peter K. Sarpong, Can Christianity dialogue with

African Traditional Religion? < http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=20683>, 15th August 2011.

and Islam allowed people to join the Muslim community without any violence in imposing rules to follow, as was the case under Christian missionaries.

Section II: Violence, Healing and the Reconciliation of Memories

Chapter III. Religion and Violence Introduction

After discussing on Arab slave trade and its impact on Christian and Muslim relations today in

After discussing on Arab slave trade and its impact on Christian and Muslim relations today in

Dans le document Christianity, Islam and Rwandan Traditional Religion: Perspectives on Memory and Reconciliation (Page 100-0)