Eastern European Muslim

24 évesen lettem muszlim 4 éves többé kevésbé tudatos kutatómunka eredményeként. Most 46 éves vagyok. Természetes, hogy ilyen hosszú idő alatt ahogy sok minden más, így a vallásról alkotott képem, a hozzá való viszonyom is változásokon ment keresztül. Ebben több faktor is közrejátszott. Ritkán írok magyarul. Erről a témáról mégis elsősorban nektek írok, magyar muszlim testvéreim, mert veletek közösek vagy hasonlóak az élményeim a közösséggel kapcsolatban. Vannak azonban saját, egyedi, “fura” dolgaim, ami miatt nem érzem, hogy bárhova tartoznék, ezért is írok elsősorban angolul, mert itt ez nem probléma. Származásom és gyerekkori élményeim: Mint a legtöbb magyar, vegyes saláta vagyok. Nagyjából ⅜ rész székely (akik nem a 7 magyar törzs egyike, talán a Kaukázus környékéről jöhettek még korábban), itt volt azért egy-két olasz és francia rokon is, ⅜ rész zsidó, ⅛ rész (esetleg horvát származású) szlovák, és na, azért ⅛ rész magyar is van bennem. Ez azonban nem volt elég ahhoz, hogy otthon ...

  You feel you can’t go on the same way anymore. You tell them nicely, you explain tirelessly, then you scream and shout. Nothing changes. Or something does. You, who were considered kind and adaptable and ready to carry everyone else’s burdens, are suddenly becoming the problem. Why are you complaining about the exact same things you have done so far? What is this rebellion? Are you a rebel without a cause? Well, definitely not without a cause, anyway. It would be so nice if they said: “It’s alright, you can do your things differently from now on, I understand it has been hard for you. You can count on me, we will figure out together how to go on so that you won’t be overburdened. I appreciate everything you have done so far for us and I understand many of it was over your limit. It’s time for me to step in and let you work your way.”  But they don’t say that.  Instead, they gaslight and guilt trip you. They explain every problem is caused by your limited dedication, and...

  Giuseppe Ungaretti has a wonderful collection of poems with the title L'allegria dei naufragi, the happiness of the shipwrecked. It's about the phase when someone has just survived the storm and is laying on the white sand shore, looking at the palmtrees, enjoying the sunshine and just being happy to be alive.  The panic of the shipwrecked comes later. It’s when you know you will be able to get back to life. But you are scared. You don’t want to do it the same way as you had done before. And even though you understand and have processed the theoretical parts of this change, you have no idea what you will actually do. Or when during covid everybody was like “can’t wait to get back to normal”, but you felt like that wasn’t normal. People, societies, humanity as a whole would have really needed to slow down. But of course we got back to “normal”, to familiarity, to our crazy hustle bustle comfort zone, simply because we didn’t know anything else. And when, nearing the end of a ...

We have a calling, a way of living according to our soul.  We silence it to be accepted by the society as we have learnt to do from the beginning.  The discomfort we feel because of this is manifested in the form of diseases.  We focus on the disease as something independent.  We fear and panic because of it and are unable to see things clearly as at the moment it's really not the right time to think our life over when we are so worried.  But perhaps it is.  The sooner we go to the root of the problem the sooner we can solve it.  What is the thing I don’t want? Or: what do I really want? Let's imagine how my life would be if I were really happy.  Fatto? Ok.  What are the points in which my actual life is different? These are the things I need to eliminate.  These are the things that make me sick. Sickness, illness, disease are only indicators.  It would be much worse if they didn't exist because we would just continue to...

I have discovered a new aspect of midlife changes. This seems to be one of the core elements of this revolution (as that’s what it is) that if we manage to overcome, it will be a real game changer. Even though we realise we need to change our lives and we do make some crucial steps, more often than not, there’s a force that is holding us back. For some reason we can’t spread our wings and fly, we might jump in the abyss when there’s nowhere else to go and we do learn to fly, but that enthusiasm is missing. We don’t run into the sea like we did when we were children, we are not fearless, not full of strength. Yes, we are, if we look back and see how far we have come, we definitely understand we couldn’t have done it if we were weak, but the joy of the jump is somehow missing. That scream on the rollercoaster. We are on a rollercoaster though, for sure, but our scream is mostly from fear. Something is missing. We lost the ability to be happy for the moment, for no special rea...

Many of the religious teachings were eye-opening truths, the real reasons why we chose it and decided to study it, but there were those often talked about topics that everybody talked about, but no one really knew the real meaning of it, or if someone had an explanation, it was something that could only be perfectly understood and implemented in a totally different culture (and time) or not even there (then). Usually it turns out about these second types of teachings that they are not even from the primary sources of religion, or originally have a totally different meaning. Nevertheless, these teachings are continuously being told and repeated and quoted, so they have become a constituent part of the cultural texture of the communities.  We shouldn't forget that the way we started was to stop and question everything around us. We should never stop doing this, even with things “knowledgeable” people keep repeating. They might only be repeating what they grew up hearing. ...