Islam in Europe


  • Photographer
    Fani Sarri
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention

Muslims have by now made their presence felt in Europe’s capitals. A different culture is growing alongside the existent Europeans. Outwards this is made apparent with headscarves and mosques. It is about a different way of social life, of acting daily. I do not judge, praise or condemn. But it is not enough to be tolerant and accept differences. We should recognize the existence of another truth, other than the one we know. Those others might see truth in a different way. To have a vision that blends cultures.

Story

FANNY SARRI: Islam in Europe.
Salaam ‘alaykum, ειρήνη υμίν, peace on you...
Muslims have by now made their presence felt in Europe’s capitals. A different culture is growing alongside the existent Europeans. Outwards this is made apparent with headscarves and mosques. It is about a different way of social life, of acting daily: Muslims pray five times a day, whether at home, or at the mosque, at work, at school, on the street; They read the Qur’an in Arabic on the metro or on the computer, they buy halal meat (the animal must be ritually slaughtered with a knife and a prayer recited while the blood drains from its body); They don’t drink alcohol; they don’t eat pork; they are circumcised; they can be polygamous; they have very tall birth rate comparing to Europeans; they have different festivals and calendars and are buried differently. So all the common life, the social life is different from the European.
Their increase in population throughout the 2000’s has been up to ten times faster than the European average, mainly due to their lower age of starting a family and higher birth rates. The second generation of female Muslim immigrants is often going back to conspicuously practicing Islam and wearing the veil, which were rejected by many of their mothers when they first settled in the West. A growing number of Europe’s Muslims feel they are victims of explicit or implicit Islamophobia and turn to religious principles to construct meaningful identities.
The first object of my inquiring gaze was the Muslims from Greece, the inhabitants of the region of Thrace, in the 1990’s. My quest has never since ceased. Through wars and peace, bitterness and joy, I travelled and travel though Islam and Islams, Greece and the Balkans, Western Europe and the East, to understand and “catch” their lives in Europe.
Islam means subordinate to the Most High, the Merciful (Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim). Thanks to there believe Muslims can stand everything else or other and they can manage to cope with difficult conditions. The feeling of safeness within there faith embrace there existences without any religious or social guilty. Otherwise they have the same things in their life. Love, education, job, family, health, faith, celebrations, death.
We are all different precisely and thanks to our differences, we can have the opportunity to understand each other. I do not judge, praise or condemn. But it is not enough to be tolerant and accept differences. We should recognize the existence of another truth, other than the one we know. Those others might see truth in a different way. To have a vision that blends cultures.

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