YOUNG, GIFTED AND RELIGIOUS: WHAT DO WE EXPECT FROM OUR TRADITION AND OUR SOCIETY?

This paper for the JCM Conference 2012 is in the first part an attempt to explain how it is to grow up and live as a mixed-raced, Muslim girl in Germany. It brings many challenges and difficulties with it but also a lot of fun, excitement and very life enriching lessons, to discover all those cultural and religious differences, developing a very own view and understanding towards certain religious traditions. It then continues to discuss the importance and meaning of Islam in my life, how living according to what I understood the Islamic tradition requires, gave me peace and happiness as well as complications and rejections. And finally some thoughts about the expectations I have towards Islamic communities and how we could all contribute to a better understanding and ways of living together as a community