Two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were based on the assumption Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, “to kill the Indian in the child.” Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, official apology, June 11, 2008

After years of working in community development and youth engagement across Ottawa, Hamid Mousa has been working with the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) since 2008. Currently the OPS Community Development Coordinator, Mousa, a Palestinian Canadian, began as a refugee to this country.

Assma Galuta, aka Asoomii Jay, 25, has been an active YouTuber since 2011 when she began doing hijab tutorials. “I saw a lot of my friends removing their hijab and it made me sad,” she explained, “They were just doing it to fit in with their Canadian friends and they would say ‘I don’t look good in a hijab’ or ‘I don’t feel welcome in a hijab’. I started my YouTube Channel because I wanted to show girls that they could still look pretty and feel pretty and be stylish and wear the hijab.” Her channel became popular internationally with thousands of subscribers on YouTube and tens of thousands of Facebook followers.

Aaida “Mombasa” Mamuji is an amateur boxer who, while studying for her PhD at the University of Ottawa, began a program training Muslim women at the Final Round Boxing Club. Now that she’s left Ottawa for an exciting position at York University, she is happy to see the program continuing with a new trainer, and former participants as coordinators. Muslim Link interviewed Mamuji about what she feels the program has achieved over the last four years.

On April 10, despite being in the middle of exams, students at Carleton University gathered for a candlelight vigil to mourn the murder of 147 students at Garissa University in Kenya.

Sheikh Waleed Basyouni has been invited by Al Maghrib Institute Canada to speak about the dangers of violent religious extremism in Ottawa on Sunday, April 5th. Muslim Link interviewed the Egyptian American graduate of Saudi Arabia’s Al-Imam Muhammad University, who is currently an imam in Texas’s Clear Lake Islamic Center, about why he feels it is important for Muslims to speak out against groups like ISIS.

Muslim Link caught up with the coordinators of this year’s Islam Awareness Week (IAW) at Carleton University. Carleton University Muslim Students' Association (MSA) members, Bangladeshi Canadian journalism student Radiyah Chowdhury and graduate student Arab Canadian Amr Daouk, ran the MSA's annual IAW from March 16th to the 20th in Carleton’s Atrium.

On Wednesday, March 18th, students at the University of Ottawa gathered to take photos and to speak out against discrimination against Muslim women who veil in Canada. The action was initiated by Civil Law student Hina Ansari and led by fellow Civil Law student Assma Basalamah and Common Law student Aruba Mustafa, who is also the president of the university’s Muslim Law Students’ Association (MLSA).

On March 14th, thousands of Canadians gathered across the country in over 70 communities to show their outrage over the Conservative government’s proposed Anti-Terrorism Act, Bill C-51. Everyone from Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, to NDP Party Leader Tom Mulcair and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, to former Prime Ministers Paul Martin, Jean Chretien , and Joe Clark, have spoken out against this Bill, stating that it will needlessly infringe on the civil liberties of Canadians and also will probably not increase national security. Despite this, the Conservative and Liberal Parties have stated that they will vote in favour of the Bill.

Born and raised in Montreal, Indo-Pakistani Canadian Navaid Aziz, 33, stumbled upon a vocation as an Islamic scholar when he was accepted to the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia at 17. Now an imam in Calgary, Aziz will be coming to Ottawa’s I.LEAD Conference to discuss youth empowerment, countering radicalization in Muslim communities, and creating a balanced and just Muslim community.