Religions, Religions, Most Of Them Wrong
I must confess, I didn’t grow up with much Kurdish representation. The only way to do things was by the book — and the dictionary definition of a Kurd is “A member of a mainly Islamic people living in parts of eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, western Iran, and eastern Syria.”
Compare that with me. I’ve only visited Turkey once in my brief existence, and feel ambivalent at best about going back, preferring a pleasantly humdrum life in Europe. Plus I’m a secular Alevi, not Muslim. A lot of Turkish Government supporters say Alevis are just confused Muslims who want Western approval. I’ve often been accused of dividing and conquering. Orchestrating an ethnoreligious free-for-all. I’ve been told all sorts of things, that all boil down to the idea that by existing, I’m trying to redefine the meaning of being a Kurd.
I’ve been desperate for approval and desperate to prove myself. I went online, where I met a friend of a friend. She was extremely Muslim. I know a fair amount of Muslims, largely a decent lot, so I don’t have a problem with that; religion is an individual matter. Not until I found out that it wasn’t an individual matter for her. Her social media was basically a convert recruitment drive. She spun her wheel of young women to land on Lily from Liverpool, Beth from Birmingham, Sarah from Stoke-on-Trent…and me. She asked me if I wanted to convert. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I said yes, I’ll do it later, I’ll do it tomorrow, next week…just to get her to leave me alone and move on.
Not until she started stalking me. Sending people to contact me. Sending me unsolicited advice on how to swear-off listening to music as if it were a dangerous vice, which and which modus operandi of scarf tying would gain me the most rewards in the hereafter. Asking me on an exam day if I had a USB-compatible mini-printer so she could send me a prayer guide, when I haven’t the foggiest idea how to speak Arabic.
“Everyone is born Muslim” is Turkish state rhetoric, but it’s rhetoric I’ve always been familiar with and essentially expected to solve all the problems that go with being an Alevi Kurd. I thought finding religion would be an assembly line of spiritual awakening; I’d go in one end a shy, ethnically ambiguous agnostic with no plans for the future after my (disappointing to say the least) exam results came rolling in. I’d come out the other end, a few words later, an ideal Kurd with a sense of purpose, a global village of coreligionists to commiserate with, and a body and soul that were one with their homeland.
But never did I feel less Kurdish than I did when I was trying to convince myself that I could not be Kurdish without being Muslim. I felt my culture, after having survived suppression by Turkish nationalism and Islamic theocracy alike, was slowly being stripped away for faith-first uniformity. I’d previously been an avid admirer of Kurdish art and Kurdish music. Rostam Aghala, Ciwan Haco, every Kurdish creative under the sun (yes, I chose that phrase intentionally). The constant notifications reminding me about how Haram these were stifled my creative spirit.
My bad experience with organised religion wasn’t about spirituality, or the religion itself. It was about control, and how the religion was being used. I’m sceptical that a loving god who created Kurds, and gave us voices to express our pain through singing, would forbid us from using our voices for their intended purpose. And I’ve come to feel very uncomfortable with the word “revert”, as though not using my Kurdish voice is just the way I’m naturally meant to be. I hate how the prefix “re-” is also in restart, relearn, rehab, recover…like addressing defects of character and making a moral inventory in a gender-segregated Alevis Anonymous meeting.
I found that religious fundamentalism draws Kurds away from our culture, which has historically emphasised being Kurdish first, religious second or even third. It turns us into regional mutations of more religious Turks and Arabs, which is just what they want us to be when they call us “Mountain Turks” or our language an “Iraqi dialect”. Oppressing governments use religion to turn us into their “Muslim siblings” cut from the same large amount of cloth and incapable of having any unique experience. It’s made me ask myself, if we’re all the same, then what or who am I even fighting for?
