Trusting in God to help through tough times

I would not be here right now if it were not for religion. Many people in my country, the United States of America, hate religion. They say all kinds of bad things and generalize all religious people as being the same. If they disbelieve in one religion, they assume all religions are wrong, because many people here have a flawed understanding of religion, and often say things like "all religions are the same." The truth is, there are a myriad of different beliefs, even a wide array of interpretations and sects within the main, major world religions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. I come from a very poor and underprivileged community in Eastern North America that suffers from a lot of generational trauma. We're underrepresented in politics and the media, and often when we are mentioned, it is with negative connotations and age-old stereotypes. Most people have never even heard of us. We are called the Qarsherskiyan people, and that is pronounced like "Car-Shear-Ski-Inn" like driving a car to ski down a mountain and shear a sheep before coming to rest in a little Inn hotel. Big word, I know, but it's relevant to my story I'm sharing to benefit others with this experience. Now, the Qarsherskiyans are a triracial group, similar to the Moors Of Delaware and the Melungeons. We have been mistreated by some racist individuals throughout history and many of us suffer from an inferiority complex because of this. We may try to blend in, acting and talking like our White neighbors and adopting their culture. Most of them are cool, but a loud minority of them can be cruel at best. I grew up ashamed of myself, and who I am. I am from an Aliyite family. We follow the Aliyite Tariqa, a small Sufi order that is prevalent among many Muslim Americans in Appalachia and the Tidewaters Region. People have spit at me and called me less than human, and for a while, I believed them. I've always been bullied and had no friends who understood me and cared for me. It was so bad, being bullied in school, I had tried to do things nobody should ever do to themselves several times and my parents had to check me into the hospital so I could be watched. When I turned 21, because I wouldn't drink alcohol, many of my friends would call me a "sissy" and mock me. I've always felt excluded, unwanted by society, made to feel like an outcast who doesn't belong in my own country, even despite the Native American in my mixed race blood. People tell me that I cannot coexist with what they percieve to be the one and only American culture. But I turned to God for help, despite being born into a lifestyle which determined I'd suffer this ill fate. My depression has, at times, been pretty awful, but when I turn to God, He listens to me. He has answered my prayers. People would leave me alone and stop picking on me when I was in college after I started making Du'a again. Du'a is a type of prayer to Allah, which means "God" in Arabic, by the way. I believe in God because He helps me improve my life and He made my enemies back down. I've seen miracles I cannot explain, with my own eyes! For those of you reading this who don't believe in God, please don't mock religious people, and be respectful of all beliefs. You never know who important religion is to people. It can be a good thing and improve people's lives. Kunta-Haji is a Sufi saint from Chechnya who lived during the 1800s. He is important to Qadri and Aliyite Sufi Muslims. He taught passive resistance and non-violent civil disobedience against Tsarist Russia, which expanded into the North Caucasus Mountains and subjected Indigenous Caucasian tribes to persecution in their own lands. Because of his interpretation of Islam, his followers resisted imperialism and did it in a manner that didn't provoke the Russian Empire to try to erase them, as happened to the Circassians, another Muslim Caucasian group that still feels the effects of the genocide in their past. Religion is good. It's individual people who are bad. Spread love, not hate.