juni 2018

If you lose your religion or your belief in how your community lives and thinks it is not easy. It can change your life dramatically. As it comes to religion, thinking in a different way than your family, friends and former fellow believers can cost you all: their love, respect and support. You can end up as an outsider in isolation and loneliness. They just cut you off.

If you do so you are an apostate. An apostate is someone who has given up his or her religion. Stopping to be a believing Muslim is such an example. Leaving the Muslim religion brings shame, rejection, intimidation and very often family expulsion. You often get threatened, you even have to fear for your life. What the Sharia law orders for apostasy is capital punishment. Capital punishment means that you will be executed. Common law sentence this as murder. In the Observer article ‘Losing their religion’ it is written that “British Islamic extremists travel thousands of miles to kill those they deem unbelievers.”

(L to R) Bushra Rahman15, Muktha Sikdar14 and Rahayla Kurshid 14 from Camden School for girls who had a photo taken with The Queen at the Memorial Gates on Constitution Hill, London which were officially Inaugurated by the Queen. * The memorial is to recognise the contribution and sacrifice made by Ethnic service men and women.

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There are other communities where you will be cut off by the family, friends and members of the community when you decide to stop living according to their rules. An example for that are the Amish. The Amish are the members of a strict Mennonite sect (traditionalist Christians). Most of them live in the United States, mainly in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. They prefer a simple lifestyle. Usually they are farmers. Amish only marry other Amish. There are different groups of Amish with slightly different rules. The Amish reject most modern technology, simple examples are cars, radios, TV’s, computers, (smart)phones and photos. Instead of a car they use a buggy or horse for transport. Their clothing is plainness, conservative, black or with muted colours. They live their own life separated from the rest of the American society. The Amish have their own private education system. Important are the ‘four Rs’: reading, writing, arithmetic (part of mathematics involving adding and multiplying numbers) and religion. Usually they have one room and one teacher for all classes. Teachers mostly don’t have a special teacher training. They go to school until they are about 14 (eighth grade). Before and after school children often do farm work. When they are about 16 years old they get the chance to explore the (forbidden) outside world. It is called ‘rumspringa’ (running around). After ‘rumspringa’ they have to decide if they want to be baptized and commit to the Amish way of life forever. If they do not return the family ties are still viable but restricted. The rules how you have to treat each other are different. Visits are not very welcome because it could have a bad influence on sisters and brothers. If a member decides against the Amish lifestyle and want to leave permanently he/she will be ‘shunned’. That means that this person will forever be treated as an outsider, a stranger. This person will not be allowed to participate in the community again and family ties will end. Shunning also takes place when a member acts against the rules (ordnung).

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Another example you can find in the Jewish community. If a woman wants to get a divorce she often comes into trouble. Because in their religion Jewish see marriage as a matter of contract between two persons. They call them two willing parties who make a contract. And because of that the two parties have to decide if they want to marry and if they want to divorce, not the state. There is also no time necessary between separation and divorce. But if a Jewish woman asks for a divorce from her husband she often has to pay a high price for her freedom. She has to persuade him to ‘give her a get’. That means to let her go. Therefore she may have to give up her right to child support, marital property (property acquired after the marriage) and the custody of her children. All this to make him let her go. As long as her husband refuses a divorce the woman stay ‘chained’ to the marriage (called Agunah). If she started a new relationship the community would see her as an adulteress, a betrayer, and her children as ‘mamzer’. It is a big shame and mamzers are not allowed to marry a Jew. So they get outcast of the community. At the same time the husband who prevents the wife from a normal life, can get remarried himself and have children in his new relationship. Also people who have grown up in the (ulta) orthodox Jews community can be cast out their society when they get caught breaking the rules.