On Tuesday, August 25, a Rwandan pastor, Salim Mikdad, conducted what
is arguably the largest conversion of Christians to Islam after he
successfully got all 480 members of his congregation to switch faiths,
Africa Metro reports.
One of the church members revealed that they
all turned up for a church service only to be forced to convert to
Islam by their pastor. Mikdad also got the church converted into a mosque
during the conversion ceremony. It is reported that an Islamic
cleric had preached to Pastor Mikdad and succeeded in converting him to Islam.
According to Africa Metro, Rwanda is a
predominantly Christian country but of late, has seen a gradual rise in
its Muslim population. About 56.9% of Rwandans are Roman Catholic,
26% are Protestant, 11.1% are Seventh day Adventist and only 4.6% are
Muslim, most of them being Sunni.
Islam started
growing in Rwanda
after the country's 1994 genocide as both Catholic and Protestant
churches helped to make the killing of about 800,000 people possible by
giving moral sanction to the murders. Churches have longed played ethnic
politics themselves, favouring the Tutsi during the colonial period
then switching allegiance to the Hutu after 1959, sending a message that
ethnic discrimination was consistent with church teaching.
Source: Africa Metro
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