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A.C.N - Aid to the Church in Need Italian Office |
Religious Freedom in
the Majority Islamic Countries |
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Mauritania Population:
2,411,000
The liberty of religion is an unknown concept in Mauritania. Proselytism is forbidden and anyone who professes the Christian Faith publicly can be prosecuted under the law. Even some people who showed interest in Gospel music were arrested and subjected to brutal treatment. The only Christians to be found in Mauritania are diplomats and Western businessmen or those from other African countries. No publications or radio transmissions of a Christian character are allowed. The authorities have imprisoned people for distributing Christian religious material to Muslim citizens. The country, a former French colony, became an independent state in 1960. It is racked with ethnic and tribal tensions between Arabs and black Africans, as in other African states. The Sharia, introduced in 1980 with a limited application was extended 3 years later. As a result, all the property rights of the black Africans in the south of Mauritania were annulled, as were their rights of inheritance. At the same time, the Moors had obtained Islamic property documents from the north for all the fields and pastures in the fertile Senegal valley. For the black Africans, deprived of everything, there was nothing left but to leave their country. In 1991 the State of Mauritania assumed the title of an Islamic Arab and African Republic, becoming to all intents an Islamic state in which proselytism was prohibited. However, Christian citizens are permitted to practise their religion provided that they do not attempt to convert Muslims. Following the clashes on the borders of Mauritania and Senegal, which occurred between April and May of 1989, there has been strong pressure in Mauritania to drive out the Christians and the other minorities towards the south of the country. The Sharia, the Islamic law, is applied equally to Christians without any distinction. Eighty per cent of the population belong to the Moorish race, an Arab-Berber tribe, and 99 per cent of the population are adherents of Islam, especially since the rise to power of the military. A few blacks are Catholics, while others belong to the French Reformed Church. The drought has brought many problems to the nomadic Moors, who have moved further south. This has rekindled the envy of Senegal’s northern neighbours, who have torched villages here and injured their inhabitants. Poverty and destitution are going hand in hand with ‘re-islamisation’ and those who are suffering the most are the religious minorities, the Christians and the members of the Qaderia. Twenty percent of the Mauritanians - blacks, Christians and Muslims - who used to live in the area of the Senegal river have emigrated since May 1989. The instances of violence against Christians are varied. KNA of October 15 1993 reports that two French priests were injured while in a church in the capital Nouakchott, by an unknown assailant armed with a knife, who shouted "Allah is great!". |
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