Turks, Greeks and my journey to Islam

By Tina Stylianidou

My journey to Islam is a sensitive one since my Greek Orthodox family lived in Turkey for most of their lives. Although I was born in Athens, Greece, my father, who was born and raised in Istanbul to a wealthy and well educated family, was like others living in a Muslim country – he held on to his religious identity tightly.

A time came when the Turkish government decided to kick the majority of Greek citizens out of Turkey and confiscate their wealth, houses and businesses. So my father’s family had to return back to Greece, empty handed and basically poor. This is what they, the Turks –’Muslims’ – did to them and this validated (according to them) their hatred towards Islam.

My mother’s family lived on a Greek island just on the border between Greece and Turkey and during a Turkish attack the Turks occupied the island and burnt their houses. So they escaped to the Greek mainland  in order to survive. Even more reason to hate the Turks –’Muslims’!

Greece was occupied by the Turks for over 400 years and we were taught to believe that for every crime committed towards the Greeks, Islam was responsible. That the Turks were Muslims and their crimes were reflecting their religious beliefs. So for hundreds of years we were taught in our history and religious books to hate and make fun of Islam.  In our books, Islam was actually not a religion and Muhammad (pbuh) was not a prophet! He was just a very intelligent leader and politician who gathered rules and laws from the Jews and the Christians, added some of his own ideas and conquered the world.

We were taught at school how to make fun of him and of his wives or his companions. All the ‘caricatures’ and slander against him which is published in today’s media was actually part of our curriculum.

But God protected me so hatred against Islam had not entered my heart. Other Greeks have also succeeded to rid themselves of the burden of the Orthodox religious inheritance placed on their shoulders and they have opened their eyes, ears and hearts to see that Islam is a true religion sent by God and Muhammad (pbuh) is a true prophet, the last of all prophets after a long chain of messengers starting from Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ismael, Isaac, Moses and Jesus (peace be upon them all), all sent to mankind to guide the people to the same message.

It was a great help to me that both of my parents were not very religious themselves, they rarely practised their religion and they used to take me to church only during weddings or funerals. What drove my father away from his religion was the corruption he was seeing daily among the priests and this led him to become an atheist.

As a teenager, I loved to read a lot and I wasn’t really satisfied or convinced with Christianity. I had belief in God, fear and love for Him, but everything else confused me. I started searching around but I never searched towards Islam (maybe due to the background I had against it). But in the end, God had mercy on my soul and guided me from darkness to light of the truth – Islam – submission only to One God.

He brought into my life my husband, a born Muslim, and we got married without us really paying attention to the religious differences. My husband was willing to answer any questions I had concerning his religion without humiliating my beliefs (no matter how wrong they were) and without ever putting any pressure on me or even asking me to change my religion. After three years of being married and having the chance to know more about Islam, to read the Holy Quran, as well as other religious books, I was convinced that there is no such thing as a trinity, nor was Jesus God.

I became a Muslim keeping it secret from my family and friends for many years. We lived with my husband in Greece trying to practise Islam but it was extremely difficult – almost impossible. In my home town there are no mosques, no access to Islamic studies, no people praying, fasting or women wearing hijab (the Islamic head cover).There are only some Muslim immigrants who came to Greece for a better financial future and who let the Western lifestyle attract them and eventually corrupted them. As a result, many do not follow their religious practices and are completely lost.

It was incredibly difficult to perform our Islamic duties, especially for me, as I wasn’t born Muslim and didn’t have an Islamic education. My husband and I had to pray and fast with the use of calendars instead of a Muslim call to prayer in our ears and no Muslim community to support us. We felt that with each passing day we were stepping backwards and our faith was decreasing as the wave was taking us in.

So when my daughter was born, we decided to migrate to a Muslim country. We didn’t want to raise her in a environment where she would struggle to maintain her identity where she could end up lost.

Now, after four years of our migration, I feel so homesick, so nostalgic and I wonder if it is time to return back to Greece, the beautiful country that I was born to and try to find a way to combine the wonderful identity and culture of my Greek ancestors as well as my Islamic identity and beliefs. I feel proud and thankful to God that I can be both Greek and Muslim.

Attention atheists – can you explain this?

After watching this video, I wonder how anyone can be an atheist.

“Freedom or death”, Greeks called. Well, practise what you preach.

 
I’ve been itching to rant about this.  When they called “freedom or death” in the War of Independence, well, just what kind of freedom was it?  It’s quite ironic that Greeks are known to be freedom fighters but then when Greek Muslims want the freedom to practise their religion, they can’t.

It just doesn’t make sense.

Come home pregnant, a Buddhist or an atheist and everything’s fine.  Come home a Muslim  — actually, just don’t come home — because you are not part of our family anymore!

What happened to freedom?

Oh, and this is the biggest confusion for me.  You are Greek only if you are baptized in the church as a Greek Orthodox.  (And therefore, the only people who have the right to freedom are those who fit in this definition?) Hmmm. 

So, is a Greek Buddhist a Greek?

What about a Greek atheist?

Or, the Greeks who lived on this earth before Jesus?

Are they Greeks?

What about Alexander the Great? 

Is he Greek?

Or Zeus?

So, you’re saying that Zeus shouldn’t have had the freedom to practise his religion because he wasn’t baptized in the church?  Who made up this ludicrous definition anyway?  Or does the definition of a Greek change based on the whims and desires of a few people?

I call it selective freedom.  Well, I have news for you.

Greek people are waking up.  They see that what they are learning in Greek school or Religion class is not accurate at best and down-right biased or false at worst.  You can only condition a child so much these days until they figure out what the internet is and start reading accurate information about history and religion. 

It’s interesting that most atheists are coming out of Christianity.  You have to wonder why.  People have questions and many times, Christianity is not answering them.  Now, I completely respect every type of person, regardless of what religion he/she professes.  And I will treat them with respect. 

God gave everyone a brain to study and the freedom to choose what they want to believe.  BUT LET THEM CHOOSE.  You might not understand their choice, but respect it.

We have questioned.  We have reasoned.  We have investigated.  Thoroughly. And we found the truth – Islam.

This is how we want to live in peace with our Creator, peace with ourselves and peace with society.  This is our freedom and no one can take that away from us.  Call that the Greek in us or the Muslim in us, but we are free.  Free from worshipping humans.

 

Definition of a Greek revisited: debunking myths

Recently, we’ve been getting an influx of visitors to our site from Hellas Fan Club.  I was wondering why and then found out that someone posted a link to our blog.  But here’s the thing, the title of their post was:

 

“WTF!!!! Ti allo tha doun ta matia mou?”

(Yeah, sorry for the vulgar language.)

 

I want to know when some Greeks will start to open their mind and realize the reality that Greeks are dropping Christianity like hotcakes and that culture is NOT the same thing as religion!  To the rest of the world, this is basic knowledge that any 5th grader can understand.

 

Here’s some of their comments:

“Any Greek who converts to Islam forfeits his right to call himself a Hellene. Christianity is bad enough, but Islam in particular is the antithesis of Hellenism. “

“Really? What about the Hellenes before Jesus. You know, the ones we’re actually named after.”

 

For those of you from the Greek Fan Club who are reading this, you are contradicting yourselves.  First, who gave that definition that a Greek must be Christian?  Like what one member said, what were Hellenes before Jesus (peace be upon him)?

 

And this comment cracks me up:

Letting the Pakis build a mosque in Athens is one thing; Greeks deliberately converting to Islam is entirely another.

 

It disgusts me how people can be so blunt about nationalism and prejudice without feeling any shame.  Take a look at our other posts and you will see why we are deliberatly converting to Islam and we are proud of it.

 

I suggest you read our previous posts here and here and the user comments that go with the post.