10 April 2004	Saturday	19 Safar 1425

NEW YORK, April 9: Islam is becoming the fastest growing religion in Rwanda where some 800,000 people were killed in a genocide ten years ago. "Roman Catholicism has been the dominant faith in Rwanda for more than a century. But many people, disgusted by the role that some priests and nuns played in the killing frenzy, have shunned organized religion altogether, and many more have turned to Islam," said the New York Times in a report on Wednesday.

The Times said since the massacre "many Rwandans lost faith not only in their government but in their religion as well." "People died in my old church, and the pastor helped the killers," Yakobo Djuma Nzeyimana, 21, who became a Muslim in 1996 told the paper. "I couldn't go back and pray there. I had to find something else."

Wearing a black prayer cap, Mr. Nzeyimana was one of nearly 2,000 worshippers at the Masjid Al Fat'h last Friday. The crowd was so large that some Muslims set their prayer mats on the dirt outside the mosque and prayed in the midday heat the paper says.