{"id":688,"date":"2019-09-10T19:39:56","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T19:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josepzapater.net\/?p=688"},"modified":"2020-02-03T15:38:25","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T15:38:25","slug":"the-spiritual-life-of-refugees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josepzapater.net\/index.php\/2019\/09\/10\/the-spiritual-life-of-refugees\/","title":{"rendered":"The spiritual life of refugees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWhen we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.\u201d 
\u2015 Viktor E. Frankl, Man\u2019s search for meaning<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does homelessness do to a refugee\u2019s soul? Important as this question is, it has been covered only quite obliquely by humanitarian or anthropological literature \u2013 often focusing on radicalization processes of migrant and refugee youth. The link between exile and religious faith is, however, very old, quite deep and extremely varied. As Alexandra Ocasio-Ortez recently reminded all who have ears, \u201cChrist’s family were refugees, too\u201d. Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina, and the asylum he was granted there, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. An old platonic tradition affirms that truth is always a re-discovery, a return home from an exile in ignorance \u2013 propelled by the wings of desire. In Eastern and Western literature, the travels and travails of exile have long signified a path towards spiritual reaffirmation, growth or change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Absence is, often, the best proof of the existence of the\nintangible. Thus, forced migration often exposes the fact that we human beings\nare made of connections, of extended emotional tissue with persons, territories\nand culture. Our sense of self cannot be understood without the social\nrelations, the reputation, standing and love we find on those who surround us:\nfamily, friends, classmates, colleagues, those with whom we have build things\nand shared memories of joint efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forced displacement entails, often, a complete breakdown of\nall of these and hence, the erosion or destruction of identity. How this identity\nis kept, destroyed or rebuilt can often be understood only in terms of\nspiritual transformation. Thus, there is little surprise that forced\ndisplacement also has sometimes deeper, more subterranean and invisible and yet\nmore everlasting effects at the more personal and  intimate level of how religious faith is\nlived. This article contains some memories and reflections on this often\nneglected issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

War, displacement and faith in Latin America<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latin America has long been a land of migration and of longlasting\nreligious transformation and conversion processes \u2013 often linked to the\ndynamics between collective and individual values. Back in the middle of the\nXIX century, the Catholic church became afraid that massive migration from\nsouthern Europe to Latin America was emptying rural Europe of believers \u2013 off\nto lands where the Catholic church, weakened by the independence movements from\nSpain, was wholly unprepared to welcome them back to the fold. Since then,\nstrategies of \u201caccompaniment\u201d were created, with the sending of missionaries\nand even the creation or re-orientation of whole orders for ends of\nreconnecting migrants to the Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 1967, the exponential growth of liberation theology,\nwith its \u201cpreferential option for the poor\u201d, gave a new dimension to the\nrelationship between faith and displacement. In Guatemala, back in the 60s, poverty\nstarted to push poor Guatemalans to escape exploitation by colonizing the\nnorthern jungle, next to the Mexican border, and establishing an agrarian\ncooperative economy. At the time, the National Institute for Agricultural\nReform as well as some catholic orders, including the Jesuits, provided\nmaterial and spiritual support to the process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, during the 70s, a long simmering civil war between\nthe right wing Government, supported by big landowners and the US, and\nleft-wing URNG gerrillas, exploded into a massive scorched earth campaign\nagainst peasants suspected of supporting the URNG. More than 200,000\nGuatemalans took to exile in Mexico and the US. Massacres were exacerbated\nafter the military coup of General Efrain Rios Montt, a self-declared\nevangelical leader. The arrival of evangelical missionaries from the US bible\nbelt began to be promoted by the Government and the Army as a counteract to\nCatholic missions, seen as too revolutionary. Researchers have recorded how the\nArmy, when raiding coloniser settlements, would often burn the Bibles, fearful\nof the revolutionary messages that they would contain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Guatemalan refugees, in Mexico in 1997, used to recall\ntheir fear at army checkpoints in northern Guatemala \u2013 how they would be\nquestioned about their religion, and how they would invariably declare\nthemselves evangelical. At the camps in Campeche, Mexico, tensions were often\nvisible between those organizing for return (which was linked to continuing the\nfight for a collective, grassroots cooperative economy particularly in northern\nGuatemala) and those wishing to stay \u2013 more preoccupied with providing for a\nmore secure future for their families and children in Mexico. The will to stay\nand to make a clean break with the past often went along, among Guatemalan men,\nwith conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism \u2013 and with other personal\nprocesses of change, such as quitting alcohol and stopping beating their wives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dynamics between displacement and religious faith and\nconversion was also present, although in less visible ways, during the worst\ntimes of the Colombian civil war, in the late 90s and 00s. UNHCR\u2019s operation at\nthe time, focusing on internal displacement, developed an interest for the\nprevention of displacement. After the opening of a small field office in Barrancabermeja\nin 2001, we started collaborating more closely with the Programa de Desarrollo\ny Paz \u2013 a collaborative endeavour by the Catholic Diocese of Magdalena Medio  and Petroleos de Colombia, geared to promote\ncommunity-driven development in the region \u2013 partly financed by oil revenues.\nQuite surprisingly for us at the beginning, we found in the PDP a strong joint\ninterest in prevention of displacement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2003, the Magdalena Medio region was object of a\nfiery territorial dispute by the left-wing Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional\n(ELN) and right-wing paramilitaries. In March 2003, the latter started the\nsiege of remote hilltop hamlet of Micoahumado, an ELN stronghold \u2013 displacing\nsome 2,000 peasants to nearby Arenal, down in the valley where the\nparamilitaries held control. We assisted the displaced in Arenal and paid regular\nmonitoring and protection-by-presence visits to Micoahumado, where we would\noften be caught in the crossfire between the ELN and the paramilitaries,\nshooting from a nearby hill. We often coincided with the local priest, who was\nvery busy organizing meetings with the locals, to eloquently persuade them to\nresist displacement. Then, as now, and as it had been the case in Guatemala, Catholic\npriests were considered as key providers of courage, emotional strength and\nsocial cohesion in the face of external aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were in UNHCR in two minds about the initiative. On the\none hand, when developing \u2013 entirely from scratch, at the time \u2013 a strategy\nabout prevention of displacement, the individual right to be displaced, as a\nprotective measure, always featured high in our thinking. On the other, we\nslowly came to understand the strategy and motivations of the PDP and the\nCatholic Church. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As in many civil wars, control over the economic use of land\nwas and is at the heart of violence in Colombia. To wrestle control from local\ninhabitants, the paramilitaries typically resorted to dividing and terrorizing\nthe local population and killing social leaders, which inevitably provoked\ndisplacement. This was particularly virulent in areas where civil society\norganizations were strong or FARC and ELN guerrillas were present, and more so\nin areas (such as Magdalena Medio) where ELN cadres had had a historical role\nin forming social leaders. Displacement and the killing of leaders destroyed\nsocial tissue and negated the possibility of economic models based on autonomy,\na cooperative economy and a strong link between economic life and local\ndevelopment. Displacement and destruction of the local tissue also opened the\ndoor for land dispossession and other development models based on extensive\nlandowning, including cattle rearing and single crop agribusiness. This is all\nthe Catholic Church and the PNDP were up against in Magdalena Medio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Influencing local development models was, at the time, rather\noutside of UNHCR\u2019s remit. At the same time, it made sense to collaborate with\nthe PNDP, at least from the viewpoint of protection monitoring and advocacy – since\nthe preservation of social tissue was also a good strategy for the prevention\nof forced displacement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One further issue was, of course, always at the back of our\nminds: was there a more religious foundation for the insistence of the Church\non prevention of displacement? The attachment of the Catholic Church to the\nterritory, its reinforcement of local social tissue, identities and cultures\n(as in Catalonia and the Basque country), as well as the protection and\nencouragement of local cults (in particular for the Virgin Mary) are well\nknown. By strengthening its role as a link between the population and the\nterritory, was the Church not protecting that between itself and the\npopulation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will see later in the article how the exponential growth\nin the ranks of the displaced in urban centres prompted a quick reaction of\nlight, mobile protestant churches, establishing themselves in the poorest neighborhoods\nfor missionary work and thereby \u201crobbing\u201d the Catholich church of adepts.\nBefore that, however, let us stop for a while at a question which is somehow\nthe symmetrical twin of the main one in this article \u2013 what\u2019s in the mind, and\nsoul, of those who commit atrocities and displace people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mysterious symmetries<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To kill in the heat of combat, OK, so be it. But to\nmassacre human beings just like that, in cold \nblood, like one butchers a chicken, that I don\u2019t understand. How can get\nthemselves to do that?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indigenous leader, Alto Naya, Colombia, 2001<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The destruction of all social tissue around a person \u2013\nlinks to family, to friends, to comrades, to the territory \u2013 is both a cause\nand an effect of displacement. What about, however, the others: the violent\nones, those who displace and commit atrocities? What does displacement do to\nthem? Or, seeing it from a different angle \u2013 what needs to happen to one\u2019s soul\nto make it adept to violence against the defenseless? Where does that soul need\nto go \u2013 and is there a way back from that dark place? Also: who forces these\nsouls into that dark place, and why? Isn\u2019t that, too, some sort of exile?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 1997, stories abounded among Guatemalan refugees in\nMexico on how the Kaibil, an elite counterinsurgency force within the\nGuatemalan army, were made so ruthless. One of the most popular referred how\nthey were made to adopt a puppy early during the training period and were left,\nafterwards, in the jungle with no other food \u2013 or how they were made to\nsacrifice live chickens with no tools. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, with that story still somehow in the memories\nof many humanitarian workers in Colombia, we found ourselves during a field\nmission deep in the Chocoan jungle, to provide protection by presence in a\nremote village where paramilitaries had attacked the civilians. We got lost in\nthe jungle, there were shootings nearby, we had to steal a canoe under heavy\nrain to reach the main river where we could be rescued, and when the motor boat\nfinally came for us the next day, the propeller shaft broke against a floating\nlog and we had to slowly drift downstream for hours on end, through the silent\nand menacing jungle, until our destination. There, in that empty village,\namidst the destruction, the invading jungle and the threatening messages on the\nwalls, the scariest thing to see was a small headless duck on the ground, with\nhis plumage soaked by the cealessless rain, half buried in the dirt alleyway. Was\nthat a message, or just a coincidence? Impossible to know. After all, we are\nnot the masters of our fears \u2013 our memories are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fear was not supposed to be part of the picture when\napproaching checkpoints in Colombia. Guerrillas or paramilitaries, at the time,\ndreaded the political cost to be paid for attacking UN officials. The\nadministration of fear is quite a rational issue \u2013 the use of irrationality, in\nitself, can be fully rational. None better than Mario Vargas Llosa has\ndescribed how fear is withhold or administered by those in power, depending on\nwhat is best in each moment \u2013 here describing the inner thoughts of Dominican\ndictator Rafael Trujillo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[\u2026] la rabia lo llevo al borde\ndel sincope. Se fue calmando. Siempre supo controlarla, cuando hizo falta:\ndisimular, mostrarse cordial, afectuoso, con las peores basuras humanas, esas\nviudas, hijos o hermanos de los traidores, si era necesario. Por eso iba a\ncumplir treinta y dos anos llevando a las espaldas en peso de un pais. [\u2026]\nAhora, que agradable era dar curso a la rabia cuando no habia en ello riesgo\npara el Estado, cuando se podia dar su merecido a las ratas, sapos, hienas y\nserpientes. Las panzas de los tiburones eran testigos de que no se habia\nprivado de ese gusto[1]<\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under that rationality, checkpoints were, often, not\ndangerous. However, once in a while one would approach a checkpoint manned by raging\nyouth, up to the teeth in drugs, waving their pistols madly. Somebody had blundered,\nand one was to learn how it was to be mistaken for fair game. What was worst\nwas  knowing that somebody had been\ncarefully dismantling in these youth the only thing that could save you \u2013 their\nhumanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The indigenous had, sometimes, their way to pay armed men\nback and use drugs in a completely different way. In October 2003,  UNHCR was very active working with indigenous\npeople in the southern Governorate of Putumayo. During one of our numerous\nconsultative meetings with indigenous groups, we met a local leader who was\nalso a chaman. He regularly organized yag\u00e9 ceremonies. Yag\u00e9, or\nayahuasca, is a psicoactive herb used often in religious ceremonies in the\nAmazonian region. Its effects are hallucinatory, but visions are often linked\nto a sort of moral introspection \u2013 offering a lens to our past and also to our\npersonality, character, vices and virtues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This leader once explained to us his first yage experience,\nwhen he was training as a chaman. When the herb became active, he clearly saw\nthe chaman administering it taking a small saw and carefully sawing off his\nskullcap, uncovering the brain. His brain was dotted with small, black spots.\nThe chaman then deposited his skullcap on the ground, took a sharp knife and\nstarted carefully picking the black spots out. Each spot represented some bad\naction he performed in the past \u2013 some of which he thought he had forgotten. He\nfelt no physical pain \u2013 however, he had to painfully relive his memories of bad\ndeeds as the chaman pointed at the black spots with his finger, and then\nremoved them, one by one, with his sharp knife. When he finished, he felt as\nmuch as peace as he had felt in his whole life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks after he graduated from his training as a\nchaman, and with the experience of the black dots still fresh in his mind, a young\nparamilitary came so see him, south from La Hormiga, half-jokingly asking to\ntake some yage. He took him seriously and organized a ceremony for him, which\nlasted a whole afternoon. When he finished, the paramilitary awoke from his\nstupor, stood up in horror, hastily put his rubber boots on, picked up his AK47\nassault rifle and ran away. He locked himself in a nearby hut and spent the\nnext three days crying his eyes out. He then threw away his rifle into the\nPutumayo river and flew to his village of origin, never to return to his unit.\nHe also never told the chaman what he saw during the ceremony. Or perhaps the\nchaman never wanted to tell us in the first place. There was a bright, barely\nconcealed little spark of triumph in his small black eyes while he told us the\nstory. Perhaps he knew he had just helped that wretched paramilitary youth come\nback from exile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life and re-birth in Altos de Cazuc\u00e1<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Religious symbols provide sense to the pain of suffering by\ncreating hope of a reward and converting the personal pain of an isolated\nconsciousness into something collectively shared.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Max Weber, Sociology of Religion<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was all very hard. And we said to ourselves, we will\nreturn to Huila. But we went to the Church on Sundays and the word of God said\nto us, \u201cno you cannot leave. This is your place, your Gilgal\u201d. Here is our\npromised land.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Displaced person in Altos de Cazuc\u00e1[2]<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Altos de Cazuc\u00e1, a huge hilltop slum south of Bogota, is perhaps the\nneighbourhood with the highest concentration of internally displaced persons in\nthe country. This big melting-pot of ethnicities and different origins, housing\nhundreds of thousands of persons, most of them displaced, has long been\ninfamous due to lack of services and chronically high levels of violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

UNHCR opened a field office in the area back in 2006, hoping to attract\nother institutions and to have an effect of protection by presence. Field\nvisits revealed a grim reality. Lack of both space and of public sewage meant\nthat the slim wooden shacks built barely a metre from the lake where all raw\nsewage was spilled, had to retreat regularly due to erosion. Invisible\nfrontlines between FARC guerrillas and paramilitaries were known to everyone.\nIDPs were often re-traumatized by unspeakable levels of violence and\nretribution against civilians along the frontline. Inhabitants used to complain\nthat, if you were yourself not victimized, you would anyway not be able to\nsleep due to others being victimized at night close to your home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Population in Altos de Cazuc\u00e1 had, nevertheless, a high level of\ncommunity organization, perhaps harking back to 1975 when the Communist Party\nhelped organize land invasions and building of the informal neighbourhood.\nAbsence of institutions and big humanitarian organizations (with the exception\nof the MSF-Spain clinic and, later, UNHCR) was compensated by the very active\nwork of grasroots organizations, local NGOs and churches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cazuc\u00e1 is also home to one of these very Colombian paradoxes \u2013 the\ncombination of terrifying lawlessness with being the object of study of an\nacutely profficient intellectual class. Institutions such as the Universidad\nJaveriana have long studied the ethnography and the religious life of IDPs in\nthe neighbourhood. Close attention has been paid, in particular, to the rapid\neclosion of small evangelical churches at the heart of the neighbourhood,\ncombining aid to the displaced with zealous missionary activity. It remains an\nopen question, however, how successful these  and other churches have been in recruiting at\nthe troubled waters of traumatized IDPs \u2013 and how religious practice and\nreligious conversion have played a role in the reconstruction of the IDP\u2019s\ninner and social lifes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly, research has shown the leve of inner turmoil and degradation\nof the self that displacement enacts into IDPs. The keyword is loss of sense.\nAn inability to find rational sense in the inhuman violence at the heart of\ndisplacement; the loss of your entire social life and the sense of identity\nthat recognition by family and friends creates; and the fear and disorientation\nlinked to being thrown, without emotional, personal and economic resources,\ninto a complex and hostile environment. Certainly, the State was not entirely\nabsent \u2013 IDPs could access the Ombudsman\u2019s office or the Personeria in nearby\nSoacha, to initiate the cumbersome process to be officially recognized as an\nIDP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, IDPs were often disheartened at the coldness of the process and\nlack of empathy of officials. The new label on offer, that of being an IDP,\ncertainly provided some sense of identity which at the same time reconnected\nthe person with the welfare state. However, this was often seen as degrading\nand humiliating, given the paucity of assistance, the level of dependence and\nthe stigmatizing label of being an IDP. The Catholic Church was present but\noften seen as relatively distant and institutionalized. It is, however,\ninteresting how popular Catholicism, linked for instance to the cult of local\nincarnations of the Virgin, was brough to Cazuc\u00e1 from the countryside by\ndisplacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, protestant pastors lived among the IDPs and their churches\nwere built among and like their houses or shops \u2013 all of them small structures\nof brick or wooden planks with zinc roofs, with colourful signs: Finca raiz,\nhacemos documentos<\/em>; Panaderia & Cafeteria Multipan del rincon<\/em>; Iglesia\nCristiana de Vida, Fuego y Restauracion<\/em>. Going to the temple and listening\nto the pastor, contrary to official IDP determination interviews, provided a\nsense of community with persons who had suffered the same fate \u2013 but in a\ncomparatively safe space, where no conversations where necessary about why one\nhad been displaced and by whom \u2013 which, of course, risked labelling again the\nIDP as a supporter of this or that armed group, thereby retraumatizing the IDPs\nand perhaps reinforcing their sense of guilt. The focus was, rather, on the\nfuture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As said above, it is still difficult to pinpoint how much this\nphenomenon found traction among IDPs. Existing research shows also a high level\nof pragmatism among the IDP population \u2013 often just \u201cshopping around\u201d\ninstitutions and churches, hoping to maximize support. Also conversion rates\nwere low in particular among adult Catholic men \u2013 who sometimes felt insulted\nby the rejection of the cult to the Virgin Mary. Many IDPs also simply simply\nsought to reconnect with the religious practice of their place of origin, be it\nCatholic or Protestant. In contrast, women (in particular young mothers),\nchildren and the youth were more open to the reconstruction of social tissue\nand inclusion in an informal network of services on health, assistance and\ncultural activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For these persons, often the personal example of the pastor, linking\nsalvation with an entrepreneurial sense of earthly success, provided also a\nsense of hope and a model to emulate \u2013 linking faith in God with faith on\noneself, and faith on oneself with success in life. Success is, after all, the\nultimate creator of sense \u2013 little need to keep asking why life has been so\ncruel with you, if after all you have succeeded. And perhaps, after much\nsuffering, as important as liberation from suffering is the liberation from the\nquestion of: why did such a thing happen to me and my family?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fleeing or coming back home? Sufi brotherhoods in Cameroon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some instances in which refugees can recover, in\nthe place of asylum, their own spiritual home. This is the case of traditional,\nlong standing transnational networks such as sufi brotherhoods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2013 and 2014 saw violent intercommunal clashes in the\nCentral African Republic, expelling close to 250,000 refugees into Cameroon,\nmany of them Mbororo nomadic or semi-nomadic cattle herders, of Fulani\nethnicity. As in many situations, protecting populations cannot be done without\na summary knowledge of their social structures for which the humanitarian\nprofession provides only little time and rudimentary tools, which in many cases\nneed to be complemented by sheer curiosity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I joined the UNHCR operation in Eastern Cameroon in January\n2014, coming from the Central African Republic. A few months after my arrival, I\nlearned that many of the Mbororo belonged to the Tidjaniyya brotherhood. I\ntried to get to know a bit more the connection. Some of my local staff\nexplained to me the importance of the Mawlid, the celebration of the Prophet\u2019s\nbirthday, for the Fulani in general and for the Tidjani in particular. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The town of Mandjou, twenty minutes from our base in Bertoua, happened to be a centre of Fulani culture in Cameroon, as well as a centre of some important refugee Mbororo leaders. After pulling some strings, I got to know one important Tidjani sheikh in Mandjou who promptly invited me to their own celebration of Mawlid. On that night of the 23th<\/sup> of December 2015, celebrations started with a dinner and a gathering of leaders at the ample, walled home of the sheikh. The sheikh, a small man with a perpetual smile and vivacious, sharp black eyes, welcomed me at the gathering of robed dignataries. In attendance was an important Tidjani sheikh who had come all the way from Dakar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not being a Fulani herself, he spoke at length in French,\nextensively warning against the temptations and dangers which lied in Boko\nHaram. At the time, the real or perceived penetration of Boko Haram at the\nrefugee camps was one of our main protection concerns, and became almost an\nobsession for the local military intelligence (with whose commander we had a\nvery positive relationship \u2013 we used to sit for almost a whole afternoon every\nmonth, jointly analyzing the situation of the refugees, of the CAR and of\nCameroon). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the dinner and the speech, we joined the thousands of\nMbororo refugees and locals squatting at a wide square and sat at the tribune,\nmade up of huge carpets, cushions and sofas taken from inside the houses, under\na makeshift bamboo and red cloth canopy. The local prefet<\/em> opened the\nspeeches \u2013 his off-the-cuff call for public order to be kept did not go very\nwell, presumably, among the poker-faced religious leaders and attendants. Then\nthe local Tidjani sheikh, always the shrewd politician, looked at me in the eye\nand announced through the speakers that the head of the local UNHCR office was\namong them \u2013 something that, obviously, I had been trying to avoid. I improvised\na speech on Islam and refugees being agents of peace, and took care of\ncarefully pronouncing \u02bfalayhi s-sal\u0101m<\/em> after every <\/em><\/strong>mention of the Prophet Mohammad \u2013\nwhich drew, everytime, a sigh of surprised relish from the crowd, perhaps all\ntoo used to slightly less respectful adresses from outsiders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has long been fashionable in Western intellectual\ncircles to present sufism and sufi brotherhoods as both allies in the figth\nagainst extremism, and proof that Islam is not a violent religion. Others have\ncautioned against a naive view of brotherhoods and have recalled how shrewd\npoliticians, including in Northern and Western Africa, have used the\nbrotherhoods\u2019 transnational networks to extend their diplomatic influence\nbeyond their borders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Be it what it may, the presence of refugee Tidjani sheikhs\nin most refugee camps in Eastern Cameroon was possibly a factor of stability\nand one of the reasons why the threat of Boko Haram penetration never came to\nbe. What is more, the fact that most refugees were actually out of the seven\nofficial camps, in towns and villages, obviously facilitated the contact (new\nor renewed) between the Tidjani refugees and their Cameroonian brethren, as it\nhappened in Mandjou.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We often discussed with local authorities how allowing many\nrefugees to stay out of camps was a wise decision in terms of national\nsecurity. They were not entirely exiled \u2013 somehow, emotionally and spiritually,\nthey were home, and there was something to gain for everybody in this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faith, conversion, spiritual death and rebirth \u2013 these are also part of the refugees\u2019 life. There is here perhaps a humble lesson to be learnt for all of us \u2013 to see also these very human aspects when we talk about refugees.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Anger\nbrought him to the brink of collapse. He calmed down. He always knew how to\ncontrol it, when necessary: to pretend, to be cordial and caring with the worst\nhuman scum, those widows, sons and sisters of traitors. This is how he had\nsurvived thirty two years running the whole country. Now, how pleasant  it was to let anger loose when there was no\nrisk for the State, when he could give what they deserve to those rats, snitches,\nhyenas and snakes. The sharks\u2019 bellies bore witness that he hadn\u2019t renounced\nthat pleasure.<\/em> Mario Vargas\nLlosa, The Feast of the Goat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Quoted by Gomez Carrillo, Eduardo Ignacio, Espiritualidad\ny desplazamiento: consideraciones para los estudios de migraci\u00f3n<\/em>, Theologica\nXaveriana \u2013 vol. 62 No. 173 (61-84), January-June 2012, Bogot\u00e1, Colombia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.\u201d  \u2015 Viktor E. Frankl, Man\u2019s search for meaning What does homelessness do to a refugee\u2019s soul? Important as this question is, it has been covered only quite obliquely by humanitarian or anthropological literature \u2013 often focusing on radicalization processes of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The spiritual life of refugees”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[12,21,20],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication-with-refugees","category-peaceful-coexistence","tag-refugees","tag-religion","tag-spirituality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe spiritual life of refugees - Josep Zapater<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/josepzapater.net\/index.php\/2019\/09\/10\/the-spiritual-life-of-refugees\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The spiritual life of refugees - Josep Zapater\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cWhen we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.\u201d  \u2015 Viktor E. Frankl, Man\u2019s search for meaning What does homelessness do to a refugee\u2019s soul? 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