On Being Human by Osman Latiff

“PIO: We no longer saw a human being when we turned up a Tutsi in the swamps. I mean a person like us, sharing similar thoughts and feelings. The hunt was savage, the hunters were savage, the prey was savage-savagery took over the mind.”158

In the 19th century present-day Rwanda and Burundi, predominantly Christian countries, became Germany colonies, and the new powers founded a feudal society in the countries.

Made up of two dominant tribes, the Hutu and the Tutsi, the Tutsi nobility descended from cattle ranchers. After Germany lost the First World War, the League of Nations entrusted the East African mandate of Rwanda and Burundi (Ruanda-Urundi) to Belgium, and thus French became the language of the government.

From the 1930s, the Belgian government made it mandatory for all Africans to carry identity cards displaying their ethnicity, language and religion. The Rwandans were divided into three ethnic groups, 80 to 85% Hutu, 14 to 19% Tutsi and 1% Twa. As colonisers do, practising a divide and rule policy, the Belgian separated and marginalised the groups along racial lines determining that the Tutsi were a superior race who had lighter skin, were taller and had thin noses – a more European type look. The Hutu on the other hand were held to be inferior, with darker skin and shorter statures. The Belgium government thus granted more power, status, economic and educational privileges to the Tutsis.

Muslims in Rwanda only represented a very small proportion of the country’s inhabitants and had long suffered the brunt of a negative propaganda, which had led to many cases of discrimination. Muslims were referred to by the disparaging terms “Umuswahili” derived from the fact that many Muslims in earlier generations had spoken Swahili. There were also attempts by teachers to convert Muslim children to Christianity, and if any resisted they faced preventions and restrictions in furthering their education. Many Muslim parents who feared such conversion attempts opted to not send their children to school and to enrol them instead into madrasas. This had long term effects since Muslims would remain as a marginal group with little influence in political life.

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying home the late Presidents Habyarimana of Rwanda and Ntaryamira of Burundi was shot down above the Kanombe International Airport in Kigali.

The crash was blamed by Hutus on Tutsi rebels and what transpired was a sporadic festering of hate and revenge. This culminated in a savage campaign of murder and violence which spread from the capital to the rest of the country.

Due to a very intense program of dehumanisation of the Tutsi population, much of the violence was carried out between neighbour and neighbour, husband and wife, clergy and congregation, teacher and students. Hutu militia, the interhamwe, resorted to hacking to death men and women they had grown up with, who attended the same churches, the same schools, spoke the same language and even intermarried.

The campaign of Otherising the Tutsis was fermented and disseminated through schools, media and in political rhetoric, inspiring armed youth to kill openly. The murderers would force others to do the same, evoking slogans of “do or die”, meaning kill or get killed, enticing them with promises of food, money and an inheritance of land belonging to the Tutsis they kill.

Many who did not physically kill others, colluded with murderers to reveal Tutsi hiding places. Though some of the violent outbursts were sporadic events, many high-level Tutsi politicians and businessmen were also implicated in the festering of virulent anti-Hutu propaganda. The country, without national or effective community leadership, degenerated into a horrendous killing field, travel restrictions prevented free movement and insecurity was rife.

What transpired in Rwanda in 1994 was man’s inhumanity to man wherein all morality was suspended. Dehumanisation occurs when some human beings exclude other human beings from the moral order of humanity. In the eyes of perpetrators such human beings lose the status that holds them together with the human race. The Tutsi were castigated with a “spoiled identity”, a state of nothingness, as “things”, “cockroaches”, as “animals” and the country descended into a savage outbreak of murder. This same process of dehumanisation existed in the rape of Nanking in 1937. The Holocaust began the same way – through an elaborate series of propaganda which featured in media and schools. The lynchings of black people in America was precipitated by a culture of stigmatising blacks as “niggers”. Similarly, the label of “gooks” was used to Otherise the Vietnamese in the My Lai massacre in which hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed by American soldiers. About this, Mark Baker offers us a haunting perspective: “I enjoyed the shooting and the killing. I was literally turned on when I saw a gook get shot. When a GI got shot, even if I didn’t know him…that would bother me. A GI was real. But if a gook got killed, it was like me going out here and stepping on a roach.”159 Glenn Gray recounts an incident from World War II:

“When a Japanese soldier was “flushed” from his hiding place well behind the lines of combat, “the unit, made up of relatively green troops, was resting and joking. But they seized their rifles and began using him as a live target while he dashed frantically around the clearing in search of safety. The soldiers found his movements uproariously funny and were prevented by their laughter from making early end of the unfortunate man. Finally, however, they succeeded in killing him, and the incident cheered the whole platoon, giving them something to talk and joke about for days afterward. In relating this story...the veteran emphasized the similarity of the enemy soldier to an animal. None of the American soldiers apparently ever considered that he may have had human feelings of fear and the wish to be spared.”160

Limbardo writes that “Yesterday’s “gooks” have become today’s “hajis and “towel heads” in the Iraq War as a new corps of soldiers derogates these different-looking citizens and soldiers. He cites Sergeant Mejla: “You just sort of try to block out the act that they’re human beings and see them as enemies…You call them ‘hajis. you know. You do all the things that make it easier to deal with killing them and mistreating them.”161

The famous Stanford experiments and those conducted by Albert Bandura sought to demonstrate the power of dehumanising labels to generate a culture of Otherness which would lead to harming of others. The researchers showed that dehumanising others with caricatures and labels divested others of human qualities. Conversely, their research also showed that positive labelling had the effect of enhancing a greater respect towards people.

The archetypes of terrorist or untrustworthy enemy created by visual propaganda in Nazi Germany of Jews or the media portrayals of Arabs that Shaheen and others point out generates an idea of a dangerous “them”, as “outsiders” and “hostile”. The repeated use of such images together with negative media narratives creates a societal paranoia about the burqa attired woman or the heavily bearded man.

In Jean Hatzfeld’s very harrowing account of the Rwandan genocide, made up largely of testimonials by perpetrators we come to read grizzly accounts of human beings who describe in graphic detail the events of the genocide in which the processes of Othering and dehumanisation are made plain:

“JOSEPH-DESIRE: The one who rushed off machete in hand, he listened to nothing anymore. He forgot everything, first of all his level of intelligence. Doing the same thing every day meant we didn’t have to think about what we were doing. We went out and came back without having a single thought. We hunted because it was the order of the day, until the day was over. Our arms ruled our heads; in any case our heads no longer had their say.” “FULGENCE: We became more and more cruel, more and more calm, more and more bloody. But we did not see that we were becoming more and more killers. The more we cut, the more cutting became child’s play if I may say so. In the evening you might meet a colleague. For a few, it turned into a treat, would call out, “You, my friend, buy me a Primus or I’ll cut open your skull, because I have a taste for that now!” But for many, it was simply that a long day had just come to an end. We stopped thinking about obligations or advantages – we thought only about continuing what we had started. In any case, it held us so tight, we could not think about its effect on us”.

“ADALBERT: At the start of the killings, we worked fast and skimmed along because we were eager. In the middle of the killings, we killed casually. Time and triumph encouraged us to loaf around. At first, we could feel more patriotic or more deserving when we managed to catch some fugitives. Later on, those kinds of feelings deserted us. We stopped listening to fine words on the radio and from the authorities. We killed to keep the job going. Some were tired of these blood assignments.”162

Jean-Baptiste Munyankore, a survivor of the killings in the marshes of Rwanda describes how the ordinary man, associates, friends and colleagues each betrayed an unspoken human oath of trust between them, and moreover betrayed the human conscience that recoils at the taking of an innocent life. In the accounts of rescuers, it is remarkable that what is often said is, “I did what anybody else would do”, or we only did what seemed normal to do.

Jean-Baptiste Munyankore explains:

“The principal and the inspector of schools in my district participated in the killings with nail-studded clubs. Two teachers, colleagues with whom we used to share beers and student evaluations, set their shoulders to the wheel, so to speak. A priest, the burgomaster, the sub prefect, a doctor - they all killed with their own hands... They wore pressed cotton trousers, they had no trouble sleeping, they travelled around in vehicles or on light motorcycles...

These well-educated people were calm, and they rolled up their sleeves to get a good grip on their machetes. For someone who has spent his life teaching the humanities, as I have, such criminals are a fearful mystery.”163

One of the murderers, ‘Ignace’, explains what the prevalent campaign of dehumanising and subsequent murders had done to the human soul and to the human codes of recognisability between people. The Qur’ān highlights that differences between people are inconsequential in comparison to the greater purpose we serve - to know and love our Creator. ‘Ignace’ explains:

“They had become people to throw away, so to speak. They no longer were what they had been, and neither were we.”164

In this, one of the most evocative accounts from the Rwandan genocide, the explanation of perpetrator “Pio” resonates with much of what has been intended and written in this book.

The full scale of dehumanisation and its destructive effects on the human spirit, on one’s consciousness is laid bare. This book has sought to understand the Muslim’s role in a world of sometimes discordant relations festered by attitudes of Othering. It shows that such attitudes impinge upon the conviviality, harmony of existence and mutual understanding between peoples – as shown in the Qur’ānic paradigm. “Pio” begins by saying:

“PIO: Not only had we become criminals, we had become a ferocious species in a barbarous world. This truth is not believable to someone who has not lived it in his muscles. Our daily life was unnatural and bloody, and that suited us.”165

The transformation that such a removal from man’s pure conscience is reflected in “Pio’s” words: “For my part, I offer you an explanation: it is as if I had let another individual take on my own living appearance, and the habits of my heart, without a single pang in my soul. This killer was indeed me, as to the offence he committed and the blood he shed, but he is a stranger to me in his ferocity. I admit and recognize my obedience at that time, my victims, my fault, but I fail to recognize the wickedness of the one who raced through the marshes on my legs, carrying my machete. That wickedness seems to belong to another self with a heavy heart. The most serious changes in my body were my invisible parts, such as the soul or the feelings that go with it. Therefore I alone do not recognize myself in that man.”166

He compares his state to a kind of metamorphosis that one would expect in a Gothic horror fiction. The relevance of the soul and the heart in our very being are of crucial importance here as we deliberate on man’s ascent and descent, as revealed in this verse: “how it is imbued with moral failings as well as with consciousness of God!” (91:8)

The Muslim is reminded once again that it is man’s inner being, his soul and heart that speak though his behaviours. Pio says that he was “a stranger to me in his ferocity”. The Othering one unleashes on another and which, in the worst cases, initially generates genocidal tendencies and then acts of wanton killing stems from a process of Othering. That is, a setting apart other human beings from the frame of humanity; a castigating of those others as rodents and worthless.

The killing first broke out at Lake Mugesera, a site the Tutsis would use to dump bodies of Hutu victims. In one of the earliest acts of courage during the build-up to the genocide, Muslims took out their canoes to pull out bodies of Tutsi victims. In other places, Muslims would pay Tutsi villagers to prevent them from killing their Hutu neighbours. In Mabare, Muslims banded together to save the lives of Tutsis, locals would encourage locals to take possessions of the Tutsis and even their livestock, but to spare their lives, explaining Qur’ānic verses that offset ethnic polarities, such as: 49:13 – “People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware.” Muslim leadership issued announcements to be read on radio telling Muslims that they had to adopt positive values and not forget their common humanity, warning their countrymen about the dangers of ethnic polarisation. They often hid their victims; when Hutus would appear seeking shelter, they would take turns sending them over back fences to other Muslim homes for protection, disguising them as Muslims by providing their women hijabs to wear and the men prayer beads to hold in mosques and in the streets.

Muslim imams taught their congregations that they should not kill other human beings, but should instead rescue others from being killed. Muslims put up road blocks to prevent people coming in in their attempt to protect Tutsis. They would purchase food, drink and medicinal items to bring for Tutsi families. In Kigali, Muslims would proclaim: ‘Here, there are no Hutu, no Tutsi, we are all simply human beings.” In Mabare, a group of Muslims petitioned at the office of the district officer and announced that they refuse to hand people over.

One Mabare Muslim explained, “We refused to hand people over. I told him myself, ‘We want to rescue these people. If you want to take their cows, go ahead, but let us protect the people.’”167 A study by Kristin C. Doughty and David Moussa Ntambara outlines the factors that appear to provide an explanation for the positive role played by the Muslims during the genocide. They consider the importance of communal salah five times a day; that the bond between people, irrespective of tribal associations, is strengthened when they kneel together shoulder to shoulder and heel to heel as a regular daily practice. The fact that the genocide began just days after the end of the month of Ramadan is another factor drawn upon by the authors:

“The genocide began just a few weeks after Ramadan, the holiest of Muslim periods, a one-month period that is a time for inner reflection, devotion to God, and self-control. During Ramadan, Muslims fast during the day as a means of purification and self-discipline, and as a means of identifying with those in need and developing sympathy for the less fortunate. As well, Ramadan emphasizes the strength of community, and Muslim ideals of sharing with others are amplified, as people eat the break-fast meal together, after sundown, and consistently share food with each other. People suggested that particularly during this period, the solidarity within the community as they all perform this ritual together is strong.

Therefore, when the genocide began just a few weeks later, this strong cohesiveness within the Muslim community and the ideals of the Koran were still very present in people’s minds.” 168

Other social practices such as the sharing of food, the practice of sadaqa (charity) and zakat are also mentioned as important ways of helping believers to sympathise with the less fortunate and build a communal solidarity. Examples of empathic outreach are a remarkable testament to the human spirit. There are, however, examples of how rancorous hatred and stereotyping can produce an entrenched Othering fed on a long process of dehumanisation, such as in the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides. In the most horrific cases even family members and close friends turned weapons on the other. Muslims then, compared to now, were a small minority in the population. Prior to 1994, Muslims were marginalized to the degree that they were not respected nor were they considered as fully Rwandan citizens in the country.

When the Mufti of Rwanda, Saleh Habimana was questioned about what had made the role of the Muslims so special and unique in the 90 days of the genocide, his answer was phenomenal. It was, for the reason that Mufti Saleh envisaged the Muslim presence in Rwanda, their purpose, the achievement, the responsibility, the underlying foundation of their initiative, to be rooted in the Qur’ānic guidelines, to be active proponents of social goodness and to be bearers of Islamic values of conciliatory change. This is what Mufti Saleh envisioned as the heart of the Islamic call in the most hostile and barbarous environment.

Mufti Saleh cited the Qur’ānic verses about repelling evil with what is better than it:

41:34 - Good and evil cannot be equal. [Prophet], repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend, 41:35 but only those who are steadfast in patience, only those who are blessed with great righteousness, will attain to such goodness.

In conveying the message of Islam, a Muslim can sometimes be confronted with bad behaviour, stereotypical responses and an attitude already conditioned by negativity and stereotypes. This can manifest in the types of stereotyped questions being asked, emotionally charged responses, vilification, abuse, degrading, mockery, insult and even physical attack. In the course of the Rwandan genocide, many if not most, Hutu perpetrators said they felt coerced to kill because if they did not then they too would be killed. Groups of Interhamwe (armed militia, often youth) terrorised neighbourhoods with a “do or die” (kill or be killed)

proclamation.

What does “repel evil with something that is better” mean in such a volatile context? In a letter of instruction sent to mosques throughout the land, Imams and scholars called on Muslims to be stalwart in their rejection of any ideology not in keeping with Qur’ānic values; to remind those intent on sowing hatred and murder that Hutus and Tutsis are merely tribal designations and that we are all humans. In Kigali, Muslims were known to make public proclamations, sometimes at risk of death, announcing: “Here there are no Hutus, and no Tutsis, but here there are only human beings.” Where Hutu Interham we were keen to Otherise Tutsis with a kind of animalistic dehumanisation as “cockroaches” and “vermin” Muslim scholars endeavoured to convey the Qur’ānic worldview presented in the verse: 49:13 - People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware.

The verse is essential in undercutting and offsetting binary distinctions fuelled by hate. It uproots the desire to sow division and dissension, and to castigate one group as inferior and unworthy. It is these sentiments of Othering that lie at the heart of intolerance and the burgeoning of genocidal tendencies. It is a verse that the Muslim would do well to learn and understand. It places between the caller and the addressee a commonality, far removed from superficial over-coatings and any claims of self-importance. It is more in tune with the one’s innate disposition, both for the caller and the addressee to be reminded that at the base human level, there is nothing that divides us. Seeking to be honoured, or being honoured, or ennobled is beautiful, since it both highlights and juxtaposes every human’s internal desire.

Man might seek to inflate himself and degrade another of a greater dignity, respect and self-worth. This becomes possible through the effacing of the worth of another. The verse emphasises that it is Allāh Who confers dignity upon man, even though our human framing of worth and greatness is often skewed and lacking.

What transpired in the weeks, months and years following the genocide, and most particularly in the initial period was a deep interest in Islam among the Christian people of Rwanda. As the stories unfolded of the integrity and bravery of the Muslims who refused to take part in the killings and instead resorted to saving the lives of Tutsi victims, many wanted to learn about the faith that inspired such conduct. A Washington Post article from September 23, 2002, entitled ‘Islam Attracting Many Survivors of Rwanda Genocide’ by Emily Wax describes:

“Since the genocide, Rwandans have converted to Islam in huge numbers. Muslims now make up 14 percent of the 8.2 million people here in Africa’s most Catholic nation, twice as many as before the killings began.”169

The article describes the experience of Rwandan Christians with the minority Muslims and the way the positive responses following the genocide opened up new spaces of understanding between the people of that country:

“Sagahutu said his father had worked at a hospital where he was friendly with a Muslim family. They took Sagahutu in, even though they were Hutus. “I watched them pray five times a day. I ate with them and I saw how they lived,” he said. “When they pray, Hutu and Tutsi are in the same mosque. There is no difference. I needed to see that.”170

Another article by Marc Lacey published on April 7, 2004 in the New York Post entitled ‘Since ‘94 Horror, Rwandans Turn Toward Islam’ described the responses of the people of Rwanda:

“Nobody died in a mosque,’’ said Ramadhani Rugema, executive secretaryof the Muslim Association of Rwanda. ‘’No Muslim wanted any other Muslim to die. We stood up to the militias. And we helped many non-Muslims get away.’’ Muslim leaders credit the gains to their ability during the 1994 massacres to shield most Muslims, and many other Rwandans, from certain death. ‘’The Muslims handled themselves well in ‘94, and I wanted to be like them,’’ said Alex Rutiririza, explaining why he converted to Islam last year. With killing all around, he said, the safest place to be back then was in a Muslim neighborhood.”171

The last words here should be those of the Mufti of Rwanda, Saleh Habimana. When asked about what transpired in those haunting days, and what spirit drove the Muslims to behave as they did, he began by citing the following verses:

41:35 but only those who are steadfast in patience, only those who are blessed with great righteousness, will attain to such goodness.

Citing the example of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) return to Makkah, Mufti Saleh emphasised how patience and forbearance are always the hallmark of a Muslim’s character wherever he is, and that, as Allāh mentions in the Qur’ān, it is these qualities that will inspire goodwill and reconciliation between people:

41:34 - Good and evil cannot be equal. [Prophet], repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend.

The rate of conversion to Islam in Rwanda from 1994 onward was a phenomenal testament to the promotion of life propagated by the country’s Mufti, countless Imams and preachers throughout the country and in the actions of the ordinary man. We might say that, as Muslims were pulling out, in their canoes, the bodies of Tutsi victims from the lakes of Kigali, they were indeed pulling out the thorn of Othering which had torn the fabric of that country. Pain and trauma indeed leave a lasting mark on a person. Ideals of forbearance, forgiveness and mercy are what foster reconciliation and what enable a relationship to regrow and endure.

An act of brutality, however, grotesque and against one’s innate nature, can leave lingering unease on a person’s heart. The Prophet (peace be upon him) was the most emotionally intelligent of all humans and his dealing with the Ethiopian spear-thrower who killed and then horrifically mutilated the body of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) uncle Ḥamza ibn ‘Abdul Muṭṭalib, (Allāh be pleased with him) demonstrated the life-long emotional pain and unease such severe trauma wreaks on an individual. Waḥshī’s sins however had been forgiven the moment he later embraced Islam and the Prophet (peace be upon him) of course gave Waḥshī his rights as a Muslim. His heart was however overcome by the everliving pain of what Waḥshī had done. Many early chroniclers report that Hamza’s ears and nose were cut off and used for a necklace, and some hold that Hind bint ‘Uṭba (she had promised Waḥshī freedom in exchange for killing Ḥamza) gouged out his liver and attempted to eat it. The Prophet’s (peace be upon him) companion Ibn Mas‘ud (Allāh be pleased with him) says when the Prophet (peace be upon him) located his uncle’s body, “Never did we see the Messenger of Allāh weep as intensely as he wept for Hamza.”172 The Prophet’s (peace be upon him) forbearance nonetheless was exemplary.

At the Conquest of Makkah, Waḥshī fled, fearing that the Prophet (peace be upon him) could exact revenge for his uncle’s killing. He thereafter deliberated on what he had come to learn of the Prophetic character and said, “I heard that no matter how grave a person’s crime against him, the Prophet Muḥammad (peace be upon him) always chose forgiveness.”173

This encouraged him to eventually return to Makkah and embrace Islam, and witness how the Prophet (peace be upon him) forgave his enemies. And so too did Hind bint ‘Uṭba, who had prepared Waḥshī for the killing, come to learn of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) mercy.

When she announced her identity to the Prophet (peace be upon him), he remarked, “Welcome, O Hind.” Touched by his selfless magnanimity she said, “By Allāh, there was no household that I wished to destroy more than yours, but now there is no household that I wish to honour more than yours.”174

Everything, including the human heart, is in flux. One could not have imagined that somebody like Waḥshī, or even Hind, or someone like Balbir Singh (now Muhammad Aamir), a chief architect in the destruction of Babri mosque (Ayodhya, India) in December 1992, would embrace Islam. Balbir Singh in fact would later find faith and vowed to build a hundred mosques as a type of penance for his role in the destruction of that one mosque.131

His human conscience speaks like that of the companion Sa´īd ibn ‘Āmir, guilt ridden for witnessing the execution of Khubayb ibn ‘Adīy (Allāh be pleased with him). Neither Balbir Singh nor Sa´īd ibn ‘Āmir (Allāh be pleased with him) were Muslims at the time of what they witnessed or took part in, but the human conscience brought them back to their natural state – a reminder - “so that [in time] God might admit to His grace whomever He wills.” 48:25