My Spiritual Journey - A story of my return to home
馃洡️ From the Ashes of Faith to the Roots of Dharma
A Personal Journey Through Religion, Identity, and Return
馃摐 Prologue
I was born in post-communist Czechoslovakia during the early 1990s, into a family of mixed Romani and Slavic heritage. Though our household was essentially secular, religion lingered quietly in the corners, like an old guest who never truly leaves. Some of my close family members were Christian—both Catholic and Orthodox. One of my grandfathers had even been baptized in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church and had served as a ministrant (child altar server). However, part of his family later turned strongly anti-Christian and anti-religious—likely influenced by firsthand or familial experiences with clerical abuse, a sadly common reality in the Christian religion.
Though I could recite the Our Father and the Hail Mary—fragments even in Latin—my disposition remained one of sceptical rationalism, more Marx than Matthew.
As I have a heritage of the Roma I knew the Romani views of God (Devla), as well the Rom(an)ipen/Romimo, and I lived it. But organised religion, to me, was a structure of control, not wonder. Until, of course, something quite beyond my reckoning occurred.
⚠️ A Miracle at Eleven
At the age of 11, we survived a serious car accident.
I couldn't explain it. We should have died.
That incident shook my beliefs.
Was this luck, or was there a higher power?
I reopened the Bible but soon grew disillusioned with Christianity. I found some teachings of Jesus jarring and contradictory. His harsh language toward outsiders and the apocalyptic tone of the Second Coming left me unsettled. I even began to consider the possibility that Jesus might not have been the Messiah at all—perhaps even a Lucifer disguised in light. That thought, unsettling as it was, ultimately pulled me away from the idea of returning to my Christian family roots.
In search of clarity, I turned to Judaism, which felt more rooted and authentic. But the requirement of circumcision made me hesitant. And so, I looked further east—to Islam, which also carried a powerful sense of authenticity, structure, and spiritual order.
馃寵 Islam: The Allure of Order
Around this time, I encountered Islam—through satellite television, of all places. In a post-9/11 world, I had absorbed the same fears and assumptions as others: Muslims were violent, Arabs were terrorists, and Islam was a desert cult. Yet the Arabic-language channels told a different tale.
The channels portrayed Islamic societies as cohesive, spiritual, and morally grounded. Amid the moral anarchy of post-communist Europe, the call of the muezzin sounded not oppressive but reassuring.
I think that my maternal grandmother also helped me in the task of seeing Arabo-Islamic World in a better viewpoint, as she was quite skeptical about the narrations coming from our (European/American) TV channels about the Middle East and its conflicts.
At just under 12 years old, I began praying to Allah in secret, as a response to what I had seen on Arabic TV—and to the inner call to find God again. I didn’t know how to recite al-F膩ti岣h, didn’t speak Arabic, couldn’t find the qibla accurately, and knew nothing of ritual ablution (wud奴示). We didn’t have internet at home yet (we would only get it in 2009), but I found Islamic resources in shops and printed articles from a public office computer.
By the age of thirteen, while residing briefly in Odessa, Ukraine, I discovered an "Arab Cultural Center"—essentially a mosque—there, I learned the basics: how to do wudh奴示 (a ritual ablution before prayer), how to bow, how to belong.
馃敟 Crises, Creed, and Confusion
At 15, I hit my first major religious crisis.
I discovered how fractured Islam was.
Just like Christianity, it suffered from sectarianism, bitter theological divisions, and even extremism.
This shook my belief in the idea of a single, unified Ummah.
By 17–18, with internet finally at home, I began learning English through online chats with Muslims around the world. I interacted with Malaysian Muslim students based in Prague, met some in person, and immersed myself in global Muslim networks. I wore a beard per the Sunnah and followed many Islamic customs, identifying as a Sunni.
Yet doubt lingered.
I explored Mu'tazilism, Malikism, and later Ibadism.
In 2014, during another Gaza conflict, I got in trouble with the police for inflammatory remarks online—proof of how deep I’d gone into radical activism.
To revive my im膩n (faith), I flirted with Wahhabism.
I tried hard to convince myself, justifying hard-line views and problematic hadiths with what I now see as “mental gymnastics”.
But Wahhabism clashed with my temperament and values. I drifted from it and began inclining toward Zaidi Shi’ism. After yet another crisis, I fully embraced Twelver Shi’ism in 2016. I found many Sunni hadiths appalling, and the Shi’i framework gave me some space to breathe.
Throughout, I kept doing peaceful da士wah (islamic missionary). I mentored converts since 2014 or so, often hiding certain aspects of the religion—either to prevent radicalization or to preserve my own fragile faith. I reinterpreted violent verses like those in Surah 9 (“verse of the sword”), clinging to a pacifist reading as a coping strategy.
It’s worth noting: I had once been a staunch anti-Shia (anti-R膩fi岣峚h), but the rise of ISIS—DAESH—shook me deeply. Their cruelty broke whatever Sunni pride I still held and led me to question much of Sunni orthodoxy.
I also tried a lot fight against narrations which I claimed were Islamophobic, so I did a “mental gymnastics”. But it got in a vain, as I knew more and more truth, which I was unable to unsee. Be it problematic Verses in Qur'an or Hadiths, as well Seera (the stories about life of "Prophet" Muhammad).
⚖️ The Exit
By the second half of 2020, I was emotionally and spiritually drained.
I began reading about Hinduism, interacting with Hindus online, and tentatively sharing dharmic ideas on my increasingly disillusioned Facebook feed.
By the end of that year, I was quietly disconnecting from the Muslim community.
In early 2021, I made my decision.
I told the converts I had mentored that I was leaving. I broke off contact with others more discreetly. Then I deleted all my social media, created new profiles, and erased my email.
I disappeared from the scene.
The backlash was immediate and vicious.
“Better you die than leave.”
“If we were in a Muslim country, you’d be dead already.”
“You were never a real Muslim.”
They did not know me, yet they passed sentence. It was not debate. It was punishment.
But my decision was final.
No more apologetics.
No more guilt-tripping myself.
No more bending backwards for theology that never fit me.
I felt no fear. I was not an murtadd (apostate) trembling in guilt.
As a response to their threats I had become an Islamoclast—not a phobic soul, but a destroyer of illusions. I had known the inside. I had believed. And I had left.
Note: Islamoclast because I’m not scared of Islam—I know it, I fight it and I reject it.
馃獢 The Return to Dharma
Atheism, tempting though it was, lacked warmth. My Romani blood tugged me homeward. A DNA test confirmed what I had always suspected—we were children of India, scattered by history.
And then it clicked.
Rom(an)ipen—the soul of Romani culture—was not European in essence. It was dharmic and I knew it always. Our customs, our taboos, our rituals—all echoed ancient Pre-Vedic and Vedic ways. This was not conversion. This was return.
Hinduism, unlike the faiths I had left, did not demand submission. It welcomed doubt. It revered knowledge. It did not pit faith against science. I was free to think, to question, to evolve.
I immersed myself in Indian and Hindu culture. I embraced the Vedas, the Itih膩sas, dharmic philosophy. I saw how our Romani rituals, customs, and taboos were rooted in ancient dharmic thought.
I became a Hindu nationalist—not in opposition to others, but in love for my people. My Romani identity stands proud, tethered to dharma. My Slavic heritage, though secondary, remains acknowledged. But my ancestral roots are Indian, and they run deep.
A Shift in Perspectives
In time, I came to study the history of Israel and the Jewish people. I saw parallels with my own. They were not colonisers but returnees. Zionism, I realised, was not conquest—it was decolonisation.
Zionism is not colonisation. It is decolonisation.
The Jewish people returned to their ancestral homeland. It is the Arab powers who colonised those lands after the fall of ancient Israel due to the Romans and it were the Romans who started to call the Land of Israel "Palestine" to to humiliate the Israelites by calling their land by their ancient arch-enemies the "Philishtines" who already didn't existed in the Roman times.
I still enjoy Arabic music. I love Dabkeh from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. But I have little patience for the theatre of victimhood some wrap around "Palestine."
Whether it’s "Pakistanis", "Palestinians", Chechens, or Bosniaks—we often see the same pattern of playing the victim card.
The more I engaged with Muslims after leaving Islam, the more firm my stances became.
馃摎 Present Day: Roots and Fire
In 2022, I launched a blog dedicated to Romani identity, dharma, history, linguistics, and genetics. I write about how Romipen and Dharma intertwine, debunk myths about Roma, and compare Romani traditions to Indian counterparts.
It’s now April 2025.
I’m preparing for a long-awaited journey to India—and possibly Sri Lanka.
I do not evangelise. I do not ask others to follow me. I simply show what was always there.
The world may divide itself between believers and unbelievers. I walk another path.
I seek truth.
I honour roots.
I destroy false gods—be they idols of gold, or dogmas clothed in fear.
Let the Romani awaken.
Let Dharma rise.
We are not lost. We are returning.
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