اسلام ثلاثون ألف إمرأة سويسرية |
المصدر : شبكة الأخبار السويسرية :
Around
30,000 women in Switzerland have converted to Islam,
according to a recent report by an organisation for Muslim women.
In an interview with
swissinfo, Monica Nur Sammour-Wüst, one of those to have made the switch,
speaks about her beliefs and her life as a Muslim in Switzerland.
Monica Nur
Sammour-Wüst converted to Islam in 1992 (SF DRS)
Although raised as a Protestant, 35-year-old Nur Sammour-Wüst feels
she has always been a Muslim.
She converted to Islam over a decade ago and looks back to an event in
Sunday school as a harbinger of the change that was to come.
“The teacher told us that God sees and hears everything, but that he
sent his son Jesus as an intermediary to the world,” she recalls.
“I went home and told my mother that if God sees and hears everything,
I don’t need a mediator.”
“Now, as a Muslim, if I pray for help, I pray directly,” says Nur
Sammour-Wüst. “Direct communication with God is a basic tenet of
Islam.”
In
1991, at the age of 22, she met and married her first husband, a
Lebanese.
“During that time I was always asking myself questions, especially
about death. I didn’t find the answers I sought in Christianity –
there, death is a taboo subject.”
Her husband, on the other hand, who had lived through war, did not
understand the Western fear of death – although, like her, he was only
22.
“For him, everything was clear, because in Islam death is clearly
defined,” she says.
“I started to learn more about Islam, and at one point suddenly I
knew. I already believed in God, in the prophets, in the angels, in
predestination, in resurrection. I was already Muslim, I just had
never realised it. In 1992 I officially converted.”
After her first husband died in a car accident, Nur Sammour-Wüst
remarried – again to a Lebanese. But after six years they divorced.
Now
a single mother, she is raising her son and two daughters as Muslims.
“I am responsible for them – also religiously – until they are 18
years old,” she says. “At home we live and practise Islam, and the
children accept it. I think it’s normal for them.”
And should one of her children no longer want anything to do with
Islam?
“My most fervent wish to God is that this does not happen. It would be
awful for me, because to me Islam is a way of life. It is not like a
shirt that you simply change.”
Still, she feels religion and belief cannot be forced on anyone. “If,
in the worst case, a child no longer wants anything to do with Islam,
then upon reaching adulthood he or she must take responsibility for
that decision.”
A
common preconception is that Muslim women sit at home and are not
allowed to go out in public. Nur Sammour-Wüst, who leads an active
life, denies she is an exception because she is Swiss.
“In the time of the prophet Mohammed, 1,400 years ago, women were
politically and intellectually active. The notion of house-bound women
tied to the stove is patriarchal, not religious.”
According to Nur Sammour-Wüst, Muslim women in Switzerland often
complain that they face more problems than their Swiss counterparts
who have converted to Islam.
She puts much of this down to a failure to learn the language.
“They absolutely have to learn German,” she says. “The prophet
Mohammed also said that when you live somewhere, learn the language
that the people speak so you can communicate.”
“In my view, if Muslim women live in Switzerland, they should be able
to speak the language. If they learn German, constructive discussions
can take place.”
swissinfo, Jean-Michel Berthoud
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