Salam
La communauté musulmane dans la République
Tchèque, l'un des pays les moins religieux d'Europe, est petite, mais les
prémices d'un "élargissement" apparaissent. Beaucoup de musulmans
viennent vivre et étudier dans ce pays d'Europe centrale. Il y a aussi une
tendance de certains jeunes tchèques à se convertir à l'Islam dans leur quête
de spiritu
The
Muslim community in the
Source: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/3/19FDEB45-4B52-4C03-B44D-51380E13CF1E.html
By Valentinas Mite
Vladimir Sanka says he is one of several hundred new converts to Islam
throughout the country and one of some 10,000 Muslims nationwide. Sanka heads
the Islamic Center, based in the Czech capital,
Sanka says that only now, 15 years after the end of communist rule, are Czechs
getting in touch with Islam. Czechs are predominantly atheists and Roman
Catholics, with some 40 percent of the population labeling themselves as such.
Sanka is in his 40s and was born into an atheistic family. He had an atheistic
education at school and in university, where he studied geology. He worked as a
geologist for 15 years. Nine years ago, he converted to Islam. In 1995, Sanka
became the head of the Islamic Center and an imam in
Sanka says the spiritual journey that led him to convert was a long and painful
one.
"Everything was oriented here in our society to [material things] and
activities. I was missing spiritual, something spiritual. I found God. I
believe that God exists. He created the universe and is above everything and
brings justice and so on. People who do something bad, it doesn't mean that
there will be no punishment," Sanka said.
In the end, he says he came to understand that only Islam fit his vision. Islam
also attracted him, he said, because it does not reject the messages of Judaism
and Christianity but is a "continuation" of them.
"For me, Islam is very simple, very clear, practical and presents a
logical way for daily life," says Sanka.
Sanka says he has twice visited
Sanka says he is not the only Czech to convert to Islam but admits that the
majority of Muslims in the country are people who emigrated from the
Ondrej Mashatov, a 26-year-old Czech, converted to
Islam in 1998 after a long spiritual quest.
"I was atheist almost all my life, but when I reached the age of 17, I
started to look for some, maybe, spiritual way of my life. And through many,
many experiences -- I spent several years in a very strict Catholic monastery
in
Mashatov says his spiritual journey was a shallow one until he met an Arab
woman, who later became his wife.
"On my way through these spiritual experiments, I met my wife, a girl from
the Arab world, and I converted to Islam," says Mashatov. Muslim men may
marry Christians, but it is forbidden for Muslim women to marry non-Muslims.
Mashatov had little choice but to convert.
He says that now his life is balanced, but says he prefers not to openly
express his religious beliefs.
"You can show it by acting in life. You don't need to say that, 'I am a
Muslim. I am a Christian.' You can just act like this and nobody doesn't need
to know who you are. The important [thing] is acting, how you deal with people,
how you deal with yourself to God, how you deal with spiritu
Both Mashatov and Sanka say they feel safe as Muslims in the
Tomas H
"I think [Czechs] are not very well informed in general about history of
religion, about Christianity at all. And there's a special situation in the
Czech Republic because in the Czech Republic religion was so suppressed by the
communist government, and even now churches are not much present in public
life. So many people have no experience with a living religion, and they've got
some prejudices against religion as such. So, if they meet some [interesting]
religious people, they are open to the conversion," H
He says it has been his experience that recent converts to Islam also adopt
many of the political attitudes of the Arab Middle East.
"Some of them are under the influence of a little bit one-sided propaganda
of the Islamic countries with some prejudices against the state of
He also says some of the converts to Islam may be doing so in protest to the
U.S.-led invasion of