People tend to remember God and his mercy in the time of distress
particularly when they face problem, stress and disappointments. The Afghan
refugees in Europe are living a life similar of the one in the hell because of
different kinds of discrimination, financial sanctions and racism. Their level
of depression is the highest and they live in a trauma even without knowing
about it. Some of them can’t survive that situation and they kill themselves and
it does not come on the media due to the media bias. When you look at their
faces in the refugee camps, even their faces do not have the normal color and
it makes you remind the faces of those Afghan hostages caught by the Taliban.
In the normal circumstances when you look their faces, it is usually red and
tan but when they are afraid of something that color turns into pale and shows
a whiter face without blood circulation in the skin. I had seen so many of
those frightened faces during the war in Afghanistan many years before, but it
was usually temporary like for one week or so when the rocket was fired inside
the house of a neighbor.
But in Europe, it is not temporary because there is no hope that the
situation will change for Afghan refugees in the near future, because the
situation of the refugees are dependent on the mentality of the people of the
host countries. If the mentalities of the people of the host country do not
change positively towards the immigration, the situation would never change. To
change the mentality of the people of the host countries, the media and the
education system can play a better role. They should have cultural diversity
programs and they need start working for freedom of religion and belief as well
as freedom of expression in order to eradicate racism and discrimination in the
host countries.
When you go to refugee camps, you will find Afghan refugees rising in
the number even more than Iraqis and Syrians who also escaped the same war in
their respective countries.
Even those who were not religious in Afghanistan will tend to remember
God and pray for their situation and ask God to help them in finding a better
life or for surviving the harsh discrimination of the environment which is not
always very friendly but sometimes harsh and hostile.
In Afghanistan when Muslim people pray for a death person but not the
Hindus and Sikhs, they organize a religious ceremony and cook lots of good food
and invite people to read all pages of Quran in one day which is called “Khatme
Quran”, a hard work for a single person to do, that’s why they have to invite
so many people so that everyone can read some chapters to get the job done so
that the recompense will go to the death person and he shall be blessed in the
other world. They have to pray in Arabic because the religion comes with an
Arabic language and they don’t know and they don’t speak that language, so when
they need to pray, they have to read some pages of the Holy Book Quran which is
written in Arabic with the same alphabet as the language of the people of Afghanistan.
Some of them read the translation in Dari if they have got a little bit of
education at school and know how to read Dari. Some people can’t read and write
but feel shy to say that they can’t read. They take some pages and move their
lips and make some noises to show and pretend as if they are reading it with
themselves. Most people don’t know what they read and what does those lines in
Arabic mean due to the high rate of illiteracy in the country as an impact of
the war in Afghanistan. But they are sure for one thing, and that is that
reading Quran has “Sawaab” which means “recompense” and it is a good thing and
God likes those who read Quran and he will pay them back in some ways in this
world or in the next.
I was invited to a refugee camp run by the Red Cross where Afghan
refugees including men, women and children were afraid of the uncertain future
of their asylum application. They brought an electronic kettle from a hidden
cupboard and asked another Afghan boy to watch outside so that the social
workers of camp should not arrive suddenly to catch them while boiling water
and making some green tea for their guest. I asked them why were they hiding their
teapot and glasses? “Alcohol drinking was a crime in Afghanistan and you
escaped that situation and came to Europe and now here drinking tea is a crime
or what?” I told them.
“No, they made some kind of stupid rules and regulations here for us
that we don’t have to make tea or cook our own food in this camp because they
want us to eat and drink what they give us. We don’t really know whether what
they give us is Hallaal (allowed in Islam) or Harraam (forbidden in Islam) but
we have to eat and drink what they give us in order to survive. They give us
tea and water only three times a day, but we don’t drink black tea, we make our
own green tea here” answered one of the guys in that camp and continued “there
are many Afghan refugees here who lived here for more than 8 years without a
positive answer from their asylum application and they are depressed and almost
lost their senses and they are now kind of crazy saying irrelevant things and
sometimes crying and sometimes laughing, may Allah help us all, I think we came
to the wrong place” he said.
“Allah doesn’t work here” shouted the other guy. “Here is the territory
of the Jesus and only he can save us from his own followers” smiled the guy and
all others laughed.
“Gandhi was so right about the Christians when he said that he loves
Jesus the Christ but his followers are so unlike to him” another boy who seemed
to be more educated than others quoted Gandhi.
“He is right” shouted the other guy. “Tell him the story of Fahim and
what happened to him and his friends” he suggested pouring some warm green tea
for me in a partly broken glass of his own. “This glass is barakati (blessed)”
he told me pointing at his own glass. It has traveled with me many countries
and that is why I love it a lot.
“Fahim and all his other four friends who were living in different
refugee camps had undergone unwanted belly operations in the same way when they
wanted to make an appointment for a dentist, for a disinfection of an injury or
went to hospital because of health checkups” said one of the guys in the
refugee camp “and they all are complaining of the same bellyache now” said the
boy. “They think that this is a hostile attack on Afghan Muslim refugees who
are living in the camps and warns everyone else to be careful about such kind
of unwanted operations” continued the boy.
One of the guys came in and asked everybody to join a praying for a
better situation of Afghan refugees organized by an Afghan refugee in the other
room. We all went to the other refugee room and the guy borrowed from a mosque
a whole Quran printed in separated chapters for everyone to read so that Allah
will recompense the good deed and improve the situation of Afghan refugees. First
he asked everybody if they could read and then he distributed the chapters to
everyone and all started to read the chapters to complete the reading of the
whole book in an hour or so. The social workers of the camp suddenly appeared
and started shouting at all the Afghan refugees and asked them to get out of
the room immediately. They also collected the electronic kettles and warned
everybody of reporting such things to the immigration office and they will all
receive negative responses to their asylum applications. The Afghan refugees
stood against this action and they all came out of the room and shouted “Freedom
of Religion” and “Freedom of Religion and belief is a basic human right”. The
social workers of the camp said we are not going to allow such kind of
religious things under the Red Cross and we will punish the organizer of this
gathering. I asked all the Afghan guys to go to their rooms without further
reactions. Later they sent a warning later of everybody and changed the
organizer to a closed camp as a punishment.
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