Sendahangarwa was speaking yesterday in a meeting on the role of Islam in Fostering Peace.
The meeting was organized by ‘Fondation Mohamed VI des Ouléma Africains’, an organization that was founded by Morocco King, Mohamed VI.
The organization aims at fighting radicalism and bad image, tarnishing Islam.
Speaking in the meeting, Sendahangarwa said that radicalism is not a new thing in Rwanda’s territory as the genocide against the Tutsi was caused by radicalism.
“In the past 25 years, Rwanda underwent extreme radicalism which resulted into genocide. The post genocide government invested many efforts to teach, so that they end radicalism among Rwandans,” he said.
He said that they encountered other radicalism cases in 2014, which was totally different from the previous.
He said that they were stunned by radicalism which was arising especially in the churches.
“We saw people from different churches which denied to register for National Identity Card, others milking cows down saying that their beliefs don’t allow them to drink milk or others cutting down crops from their farms,… it was quiet unbelievable. In 2015, many people had developed such behaviors until some of them started going to organize from neighboring countries,” he said.
Security forces intervened to counter terrorism and arrested people who were involved and shot others dead who were trying to fight back them.
He said that invested efforts paid-off and discouraged radicalism to the extent that some people who were planning to involve changed their mindsets.
“Currently, the situation returned in normal. There is no more threat. The group that had such beliefs was arrested and others stopped,” he said.
The head of Fondation Mohamed VI des Ouléma Africains Rwanda, Sheikh Moussa Sindayigaya said that the organization wants to encourage youth teach youth in how to analyse content they acquire from internet.
He said that the majority of youth which had radicalism behaviors had acquired them from internet and assumed them without critical analysis.
“Not all internet content are genuine, people should use internet when they are capable to analyse what to acquire from there,” he said.
He said that radicalism and terrorism should not be regarded as the case of Muslims, but as a problem of concern Worldwide.
“Every Church can be used in the interest of the founder of the terror group. When the group is formed in a country where the majority is Muslims, the group will say that they are fighting for the interests of Muslims, immediately they will get supporters because people love their religions,” he explained.
The President of National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, Bishop John Rucyahana urged religious organization heads to found their beliefs on the culture than the church.
“Churches should not be the root cause of parting ourselves, but they should be facilitating us in nurturing humanity,” he said.
Without revealing the numbers, Sendahangarwa said that there are Rwandans who joined terror groups like Al Shabab and ISIS through neighbor countries. In 2017, Police revealed that the courts had 46 cases of radicalism.
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