Their marginalization and solidarity
For a long time, the Muslims in Rwanda had been discriminated against by the state
in diverse ways (economically, politically, socially, religiously). This marginalization
welded the Muslims together and led to their developing solidarity across ethnic lines.
Islamic values
In their “sensitization campaigns” against the threatening ethnic conflict,
the Muslims, appealing to the Koran, emphasized the Islamic command to treat all persons
equally, the command to help the suffering and the oppressed, and the prohibition against
killing.
Actions
• Making public pronouncements in the mosques, in the radio, and in handbills calling for non-violence.
• Giving asylum to Tutsi refugees in the mosques and providing them with charitable aid.
• Helping threatened persons to flee.
• Obstructing marauding death squads with roadblocks in Muslim villages.
• Saving individual Tutsi by paying ransom.
• Pretending to have massacred the Tutsi in their midst by digging fake graves, so the death squads would move on.
Credibility
The Rwandan Muslims were politically independent and neutral: this made them
especially trustworthy for the threatened and persecuted Tutsi.
The Muslims aided all of the persecuted regardless of religious and ethnic affiliation.
Muslim leaders were strictly against all violence and took public stands for non-violence at all times.
