… trying …

I am trying… I really am, to post progress pictures on Wednesdays. In the current chaos of my life I fear if I don’t I will forget his blog. But now it’s Friday already… where did this week disappear to? It was a weird week. Monday was a public holiday and while I did get some work done I still had to go to my grandma for coffee+cake and then the whole family went to the cemetery to visit my grandfather’s grave. And then I couldn’t sleep because, and not for the first time, I started to panick about my thesis. Luckily I have a wonderful friend who knows reiki and sent me some on Tuesday night =) and since then I’m more relaxed. On Wednesday I visited a mosque with my religious studies lecture which was fascinating. We were allowed to stay for prayer (there weren’t a lot of people there) and it was interesting. Also, immediately when I entered the little prayer hall I felt … well, the religious presence somehow. Quite similar to what I feel in a church. People come there to pray and you (I can at least) can feel that kind of energy even if it’s not my way of doing things. Also, while churches are “cold” mosques are … warm… they embrace you in a very comfortable way. We had to take of our shoes and there was carpet, and we all sat down on the floor. A wonderful experience. It should be part of the school curriculum or something to visit a mosques or other places of worship different to ones own. And the people were so friendly and patient, willing to explain just everything. (One thing was amusing, really, our professor’s outrage when two of the people who are in the senior citizen’s uni programme asked questions heehee… one lady was commenting on segregation and wasn’t really willing to accept the muslima’s explanations and one man claimed that all religion where about how sinful mankind could reconcile with the divine and she (our professor) couldn’t leave that uncommented “that is utter rubbish what you’re saying there” so funny^^).

Anyway, I spent the rest of Wednesday and yesterday writing my thesis which is going quite well. I’m now in the middle of defining “religion” and “religious” and trying to establish how to deal with it in research. It’s like the last five years prepared me to write this… that’s how it’s supposed to be I guess.

Aaaand, yes, I also have a progress picture of bitterroot. I’m still in love with the yarn!

(Really … is there a way to take a good progress picture of a shawl?) I have to say it’s not exactly working out as I thought but I will comment on that once I’m finished. Shouldn’t be that long now as I’m on the border chart now.

Oh and I just signed up for a homemade Christmas/Yule card swap hosted by useless beauty designs, a blog that I’ve been following for a while now. Yay =D very exciting… I’m already pondering what I could do ^^

The Unique Perspective from Within the Broom-closet

This semester I am taking a class on Neopaganism. This time again, like three years ago when I had a class on New Religious Movements, I chose as my presentation topic Wicca. I had planned to do something different but I somehow still wanted to make sure the right things were said and the religion was presented in the right way. So there I was, and not alone. I worked together with a nice girl I didn’t know before and our presentation yesterday was a success. The seminar in itself is a bit of a challenge, as you can maybe imagine, but at the same time a wonderful experience. It is a good feeling that there are teachers, researches and students who look at Neopaganism just like they would look at any other religion.  Nevertheless I ‘stayed in the broom-closet’ as you might say and did not identify myself as a Pagan. And I do not plan to openly do so.

The broom-closet is not a place I feel particularly well in. These past few years I have tried to treat my beliefs as openly as possible. I have my great best friend who is helping me, as you might find us in our favourite pub discussing pagan issues in a normal manner. I have grown used to using terms like ‘magic’ in public. I think our situation will not improve if we all stay hidden. We need to get the public to notice us and have a tolerant, if not good opinion, on us. And I think the first step towards a normal relationship with the mainstream culture is an open attitude on our part.

My experiences have generally been positive as well. Mostly people react interested, or they do not much care. The girl I held the presentation with yesterday asked me last week when we were working on all of that, if I also was interested in it in my private life. I had brought books to show her, one by Scott Cunningham, so I was kind of expecting her question. I answered truthfully (as I always will do, a question deserves a truthful answer) and ever since she has been treating me just like she did before and we still chat about all kinds of things and sat next to each other in the other lecture we share. It has been years since anyone reacted negatively.

In the academic discourse it is different, though. On the one hand I do not fear judgment or negative reactions there, especially not in a Religious Studies class. We all have been trained to be objective and keep a distance both to our own beliefs as well as to the belief system we are studying. So why not just say, ‘I am Pagan, you can ask me whatever you like.’ Well, even though people are generally tolerant and hold the opinion that every religion is just as good as any other and also that every religious belief is valid as long as there is one person who believes it, they do have opinions. They especially do so about things like ‘magic’. Now, if I had identified myself as Pagan, there would have been an important factor in the discussion: politeness.

Take the comment one of the girl made after our presentation:

I don’t want to offend anyone, but what do they do, if it doesn’t work, because let’s face it, it’s magic, it doesn’t work. They can’t really believe it will work.

I do have the feeling she would not have said something like that, if she had known that I was Pagan and practiced magick. She might have hinted at her opinion (she is not a nice-nice girl, if you know what I mean… very opinionated and out-spoken… as a reaction I simply smiled… I was there not as a Pagan but as the objective presenter) but she would not have said something like that, so as not to offend me. It simply is a different thing, offending someone ‘out there’ or someone who just presented some of her own beliefs and the history of her beliefs and is sitting right in front of you. It is so much more interesting to see what people really think.

There is another reason why I did this topic and did it the way I did it: It is simply a good way to practice this kind of double distance I described. It is important to be able to take a step back from what you belief and try and look at it from a neutral point of view. I think I did it well. And maybe I will tell her later on that I am Pagan… we’ll see. I will not keep it a secret. I discussed that girl’s attitude with my co-presenter afterwards and she found it weird, too. I also noticed another girl’s interested glances … interested, not judgmental … as I talked about how it is sometimes easier to stay hidden because of people like that. I enjoyed that immensely. Talking openly about my faith and people being just normal. This was a very enjoyable experience.

This ‘interested looking’ girl is a muslima, wearing hijab and I also have this fascination with hijabs … and sometimes I wish it was as easy as that. You wear a hijab and everyone knows what’s going on. We are on opposite ends, aren’t we? We Pagans want to be taken seriously and want to be seen but it is difficult to get in the right light and muslimas want to be taken seriously and treated fair and are so easily visible but still not always in the right light…

Islam – our problem.

Islam – our problem. Provocative, isn’t it? Yes, deliberately. But please read through.

This entry is about something that actually enraged me. An incident much similar to the one that made me decide to start this blog in the first place and actually also thematically related. I wrote it a week ago and then first forgot to post it and then last week my modem broke down but now here it is.

Wednesday night I was watching TV. Just what I usually do on most weeknights and always on Wednesdays as I’m a TV-show junkie. But that’s not important here. So I watched my usual shows and then remembered I had seen the trailer to Stern TV earlier that day and one of their topics was how this girl was doing, who had been separated from her Siamese twin five years ago. So I watched Stern TV. You know, when I turn on Stern TV I do know what to expect. I expect topics that are sensational, topics the public wants to know about and speak about and so they are also presented in a manner that everyone can follow. I don’t expect too scientific discussions or too controversial things, I do however expect a certain … level. And that was missing in the show from last Wednesday. The topic that I’m talking about is not the little girl. That wouldn’t make much sense in relation to my title, either, would it? No, what I’m talking about is one of their other topics: Islamism among young German men, most of them having what we so “eloquently” call a Migrationshintergrund meaning their parents came from abroad but they were born and brought up here in Germany. It is big topic and I agree that we need to speak about what makes those young people decide to enter terrorist camps in Afghanistan; I also expect to hear different opinions on this but the way it was discussed on Wednesday night was adultering, almost populist, fueling fear and hatred, I found it  simply horrible.

But let me summarize. Their example were two young men in their mid-twenties, born and raised in some town in the Ruhrgebiet, I don’t know which one it was, but their parents came from Morocco. They made a big deal of how very integrated they were, that they were well educated, one of them studying, the other doing an Ausbildung, and so on. Since a few months these two haven’t been seen in their hometown but several videos had surfaced in which they were seen in some desert-looking environment, looking severe. They were armed and, well, you know those terrorist videos in which “they” threaten the western community. The important thing was that they spoke German. Then they also had a former friend of one of the two who spoke about the changes that had come over his friend graduately. It all seemed very dramatic, he stayed in the dark and wouldn’t show is face, as if he were scared. Up to this point I followed with interest and as I said, I do think that this is an important topic. What followed though was, in my view, outrageous.

They introduced an “Aussteiger”. A young German man, interestingly without the immigrant background as far I could tell, who had been an Islamist, a Muslim fundamentalist and who had openly justified Jihad and violence in the name of Allah not so long ago.  Apparently saw what he was getting into at some point and decided to turn his back from “it”. I think he was 26 years old and now studied Aconomics I believe. He looked it, anyway. Now he had set his mission to informing the public of … evil Islam.

Yes, you read right. In his opinion the whole religion was corrupt, evil, and justified violence. The best thing, reading between his lines, would be to simply keep people from being Muslims. I wish I could directly quote him but I can’t. I was getting so mad that I couldn’t memorize, let along write down anything. I know that there are people out there who think like that. And well, that’s his opinion, but it’s just not true. Period. Full stop. It isn’t. And I bet Günter Jauch knows that. I’d be gravely disappointed if he didn’t. I mean more disapointed than I already are in him now. Because he didn’t say anything. I mean he could have just pointed out that crazy islamist suicide bombers are not representative to the religion of Islam. In my opinion it would have been his duty to pointit out. But he didn’t. And he as the host just has the authoritative position there. He can, with a simple remark, make a statement less grave, his role even is to see that multiple views are represented and that things will not be misunderstood. Either he or the executive directors – whoever that is – have made a terrible mistake, a mistake of which they should apologize.

Now that I’ve said this I can go on and comment myself. In every discussion being related to religion my role will always be the one of the mediator. It’s what I have been taught these past three years at uni. The first thing we learned was epoché, distancing oneself twice, firstly of the subject matter and secondly from one’s own views. That is of course an ideal state and not really possible but this is where I’m coming from. I said mediator was my role. So which are the parties between I stand here? The one, obviously, is Religion, Islam to be precise, maybe even European Islam. The other is the “mainstream West European society”. And let me tell you these two do need mediators – desperately – because they are not able to work together directly most of the times. And they have to, because Islam is part of that society. Muslim migrants or people with a immigrant background, who are Muslim live in almost all west European countries and they are not going away. They will stay here and they will not give up their traditions or their religion. So we better learn to live with our Muslim neighbour. Integration does not mean that they stop living their religion or their traditions. Take a look at Goodbye Deutschland and tell me if the Germans immigrating to some other country do what this society expects of its immigrants.

In my opinion the European Islamic community is close to being openly discriminated against. And this is dangerous. Da beißt die Katze sich in den Schwanz, as we’d say in German. See, to become an Islamist, in my opinion, you must hold a certain grudge against western society before someone recruits you, at least in some latent way. And are you actually surprised to find that these young, seemingly integrated people do hold such a grudge? No, how could that be possible, we all tolerate them so well, let them build their mosks, accept that someone with a darker skin is German, wouldn’t mind if “our” girls dated “their guys”. I would laugh if it all weren’t so grave. We are producing them ourselves I tell you by our negative opinion about their traditions, life style and religion. If we would for one just stop portraying Islam as the evil religion, if we would teach our children from early on that there are people that believe differently and that it is absolutely ok, if we would let our teachers wear a hijab if they want to and let them explain why they do so themselves, we’d take a first step at making Islam a European religion. Europe always considers itself Christian but the only point for this history. Christianity and Islam have developed not so far away from each other geographically, the one was only faster on it’s way to Europe, the other one took a detour.