Potret Para Mualaf

Vanesaa Vroon-Najem berhasil memenuhi keinginannya. Sebuah pameran yang ia rancang akhirnya terwujud. Pameran di Museum Amsterdam, Belanda, itu menggambarkan tentang meningkatnya jumlah mualaf dan kehidupan mereka.

Pameran sudah berjalan mulai 11 April lalu hingga 27 Juli 2014 mendatang. Pameran bertema Converted. Becoming Muslim – being Muslim itu merujuk pada penelitian Najem untuk program PhD-nya. Ia seorang antropolog yang memeluk Islam pada 1996.

Sejak pertama melakukan penelitian, ia ingin mengomunikasikannya kepada banyak orang. ‘’Saya juga ingin menyampaikan informasi lebih baik mengenai perkembangan Islam di Belanda,’’ kata Najem seperti dikutip laman berita Onislam, Ahad (18/5) lalu.

Jumlah orang yang memutuskan menjadi mualaf telah melebihi 15 ribu orang. Perempuan yang sudah bekerja di Museum Amsterdam sejak 1999 itu juga menggandeng mualaf perempuan lainnya, Saskia Aukema. Ia seorang fotografer.

Najem mengakui, proposal pameran yang diajukan ke museum diterima dengan baik karena didukung foto-foto bagus Aukema. Dan sebenarnya, Aukema pun sudah berencana untuk memamerkan foto-foto tentang mualaf.

Menurut Najem, pameran seperti ini dapat menunjukkan wajah Muslim yang damai. Bukan kelompok-kelompok radikal yang biasa ditampilkan di media. ‘’Banyak orang menggunakan istilah ‘kami’ dan mereka saat berbicara tentang Islam,’’ katanya.

Namun, Najem meyakini melalui pameran prasangka terhadap Islam dan Muslim bisa perlahan memudar. Menurut Aukema, ia menyiapkan proyek pameran ini selama enam bulan. Selain itu, Najem dan Aukema juga akan menerbitkan buku yang ditulis bersama berjudul Converted.

Menurut Noureddine Steenvoorden, seorang mualaf, pameran di Museum Amsterdam bertujuan memperkaya pengetahuan warga Belanda mengenai perkembangan sosial. Maksudnya, semakin banyak orang yang berpindah agama ke Islam.

Tak hanya itu, ia berharap pula terhapusnya prasangka buruk warga terhadap Muslim dan para mualaf. Ia membantu memasang pengumuman terkait pameran. Ia juga mengunjungi komunitas Muslim agar tertarik pergi ke Museum Amsterdam.

Ia mengajak Aukema ke masjid-masjid untuk memotret kegiatan komunitas Muslim dan mualaf. ‘’Dia ingin memberikan pandangan yang tak bias terhadap mualaf dan bagaimana mereka menunaikan ibadah sehari-hari,’’ kata Steenvoorden.

Saskia Aukema mengungkapkan pengalamannya saat bertemu dengan para mualaf dan kemudian memotretnya. Menurut dia, upaya meningkatkan hubungan anak-anak muda mualaf dengan orang tuanya menjadi topik utama bagi mereka.

Aukema mencoba menangkap fenomena ini melalui lensa kameranya. Salah satunya, ujar dia, seorang perempuan mualaf berbincang bersama ibunya dengan penuh kasih sayang.

sumber : republika.co.id

The transformation of the Muslim mind Turkish

Vienna - the Austrian capital amazing buildings, impressive museums and delicious schnitzels.Mais outside of it, what I really was for a short visit is the community growing Turkish students who have found not just a good education, but also religious freedom in this far-away land.

In more descriptive words, I came to Vienna to speak at WONDER, a company founded by a group of Turkish students who moved here in Austrian universities.All were either girls who wore the hijab or young graduates of secondary schools of religious Turkey ("" imam-hatip"") .they were all excluded from the "post-modern coup" of the end of the 1990s, in which the ultra-secular generals tightened old lay decades of apartheid the Turquie.En other words, the doors of Turkish universities were simply close to these young conservatives.

Means of the West

In fact, the veiled girls received a choice: they either would take off their scarves and then admitted to universities, or keep and forgetting to education.But some found instead a third way, which the Turkish Generals probably don't expect: the education of the West.

Austria became a destination preferred, because it was closest to the Turquie.Tout and relatively cheaper first, in 2000, only a dozen girls a - some Istanbul, other less cities fantasies of Anatolia. First of all, they were hesitant on "the country of the infidels," and the treatment they would face it. But soon they realized that liberal countries in the "infidels" is more respectful of their faith as the intolerant in their homeland.

"I was concerned about the manner in which the Austrian me would be with my scarf," says Hatice, 25, a first student Turks came to Vienna. "But I faced discrimination."

Instead, she recalled how she was positively surprised when a professor at the University of Vienna he congratulated on the beautiful colour and adjustment of his scarf. "In Turkey, teachers used dédaignés me a bigot," she says. "It was the first time I heard something about how I looked beautiful."

Hatice is now in the program of master's degree in computer science and has ambitious dreams about his future career.But the five years that she spent there are taught his things other than just science. " "In this society live only the way in which they choose and respect differences," she admired."This is a lesson Turkish we need."

I ask him the freedom of non-Muslims in a Muslim country. The missionaries should, for example, have the right to evangelize in Turkey? "Yes," she said. "There are 17 mosques now in Vienna; if we can propagate Islam here, they should be able to spread Christianity it as well."Then it tells me how she convinced her mother more conservative on this issue:

"When the monastery Sümela Trabzon reopened last summer, my mother didn't like it." "But I said its only Muslims we should support the freedom of all for the sake of justice", she says.

Muhammed, 24, another student Turkish in Vienna and is also sensitive to justice. He is a graduate of religious schools denied equal access to Turkish universities.Experience with injustice seems to have given him an egalitarian vision, for now he defends the rights of all groups in society.That is why, he said, he invited me to speak on the Kurdish question. "I want my friends to get the authoritarian State which abolished we have also done the same for the Kurds and Armenians.»

Farm self-criticism

Mohammed is also critical to its own tradition."The Kemalists have certainly been intolerant toward us, he said."But we must admit that we were not tolerant either."It is very critical of the school"imam-hatip"gets his degree, blaming"a dogmatic and oppressive approach."He believes that Muslims must develop a "more individualist culture, based on the examination".do not obey

Really, I've seen the seeds of this culture among these young Muslim Turks to Vienne.WONDER, which they organized thanks to the support of charitable, was in the House for more than 1,200 students, most had processing experiments in this country étranger.Ils are still very religious and enough conservateur.Mais they have become much more liberal spirit than their parents and even more secular Turkish nationalism can reach extreme heights.

This story, I think, is one of the examples of a remarkable phenomenon: the Muslim Turks in the mondialisation.Cela commitment was already evident in economic globalization of our "bourgeoisie" Muslim it was also evident in hundreds of schools that have opened religious followers of black kite/Fgulen Gülen, a popular Muslim leader, throughout the monde.Et it is now also evident in the stories of pious Turkish students who discovered the freedom in universities in Europe or America.

I see this trend as an unexpected consequence of tyrannical secularism of the Turquie.On can, perhaps even see it as a confirmation of an old Islamic word of wisdom: "in every wickedness, there is also some goodness."

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