Hi guys! It's really nice to finally be here, with so many smart and interesting people.
I've seen that it's customary for new people to introduce themselves, so I'll try.
I'm Romani, female, in my 30s, I was born near the Syrian-Turkish border, raised in the US, usually living in Switzerland, but currently staying with in-laws on the German side of the border. Simple, ain't it? I'm from a mostly Sunni family, and I used to be a closeted agnostic in my youth until I finally decided to read the Qur'an in full and in context. The plan was to become a believer again. Instead, it pushed me further to the atheist side. Reading the six books for myself over time, instead of just having them "explained" to me, confirmed my impressions. I finally came out as a humanist in my 20s. I don't know how much I'll be able to write here because I have a family and some volunteer work to take care of. But I'll do my best.
The thing that really drove me away from Islam wasn't actually arguments against religion, they didn't matter that much to me back then. It was that the Muslim community regularly gave us the same racist nonsense we were getting from whites. They never recognized us as intelligent humans with agency, so they felt entitled to telling us what to do. In the US, they even discouraged us from interacting with our own ethnic community because most of them were Evangelical Anglo-Roma and contact with them would somehow expose us to bad ideas from white folks. They treated us like parents treat their impressionable children. Both white Christians and Muslims seemed to agree that gypsies were inferior (about that term: some Romani people consider "gypsy" derogatory. I use it because everyone knows what it is, so you may use it with me as long as I don't have to debate our status as full human beings with you. Others of my people may be offended by the word though.). When I read the Qur'an, I was hoping to find the "real", "universal" Islam that accepted us. Instead, I found a whole lot of dehumanization of otherness. It was the same "if you're not like us then you're inferior" in theory that we were getting in practice. I kept thinking, who does this guy from ancient Arabia think he is, telling me that his culture is superior to mine. At that point, I was done with Islam.
My tentative alternative is humanism - I say tentative because I'm a person who needs community, and humanism only seems to cover the individual aspects of a better future. I guess what I really want hasn't been invented yet. Someone I care about said she wanted to be a rationalist and have a figurative heart at the same time. That's exactly what I want myself and the people around me to be. Rationalists with a big heart who don't leave anyone behind. I'm hoping to get a little better at it every day, and to find others here who might have similar goals, as well as people looking for something different. Diversity is always a good thing.
It is typical archaic thinking which propagate the divide between humans, us vs them, race vs race, religion vs religion etc. State government love to define people which just propagates the system further. You are a human, that is more than enough for anyone.
Topic: Help! The gypsies are coming