In last month's issue, Muslim Link interviewed Shahzad Khan, co-founder of Gnowit, who had recently been made a 2013 Rising Star by Invest Ottawa. Mohammad Al-Azzouni is also a co-founder of Gnowit and works as the company's VP of Business Development & Marketing. Both men met in 2010 at the Legacy Conference which Al-Azzouni founded while studying Economics and Marketing at the University of Ottawa.

We at Muslim Link strive to make it a non-partisan publication that respects that Ottawa's Muslims support a variety of political parties. However, when we were invited to spend a day with Yasir Naqvi, the Ontario Minister of Labour with the Liberal Party, we jumped on the opportunity to see just what a politician does with his or her time. Our goal is to demystify the work of politicians and encourage citizens to take more of an interest in politicians' work throughout their time in office, not just during elections. This is important in order to keep politicians accountable to their constituents. Along with Muslim Link reporters, 16 year-old Adilah Makrup, a Lisgar High School student and photographer living in Yasir's riding, was invited to join Muslim Link on November 15th for the chance to connect with the man who represents her and her family provincially. We hope that this will become a regular series as more politicians invite us to spend the day with them.

On November 4th, Mohamed Islam, 31, was awarded with Crime Prevention Ottawa's 2013 Youth Worker Award in a ceremony at City Hall. Crime Prevention Ottawa (CPO) is an organization which aims to reduce crime and enhance community safety through collaborative evidence-based crime prevention strategies. Mohamed Islam is a Youth Worker with the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa and is the coordinator of the Somali Youth Support Project, a program run out of the Pinecrest-Queensway Community Health Centre.

This month we at Muslim Link noticed this photo that was being shared widely thorough various social media. We decided to track down its origin and discovered that it was the creation of a 17 year old high school student, aspiring photographer, and jewelry designer from Alexandria, Egypt named Hadeia Nour Adel. Here is Muslim Link's interview with her.

Berak Hussain discovered her passion for counselling back when she was a student at Gloucester High School.

Haneen Alhassoun recently won second place this month at the Ottawa Youth Poetry Slam. At 16, the Brookfield High School student is both humbled and excited about her win as she has been working towards it for the past two and a half years.

The fifth annual Expressions of Muslim Women (EMW) took place on Saturday, November 17 at the Centrepointe Studio Theatre. The sold-out event raised funds for local charities like Sadaqa Food Bank and Nelson House, a shelter for women and children fleeing abuse.

The title of this year's event was “Strength in Sisterhood”, a theme which ran through several of the performances that evening. The theme was also embodied by the commitment of the event organizers, a group of women who have volunteered to make EMW an artistic celebration for women to look forward to each year.

November is Adoption Awareness Month.  Throughout the month, Children's Aid Societies across Ontario spread the message that ”˜Every child deserves to have a forever family' in the hopes of encouraging more families to open their homes to children in care. As the Children's Aid Society (CAS) works to build bridges with Muslims in Ontario, the issue of adoption has turned out to be an unexpected stumbling block. Islamic jurisprudence does not allow Muslims to practice adoption in many circumstances, particularly closed adoption, when a child does not have access to knowledge of their birth parents. Islamic jurisprudence emphasizes the importance of lineage so any practice that would deny a child their right to know their identity is not permitted.

Farhat came to Canada in 1969 to marry and raise a family. Like other immigrants of her age and background she had many aspirations and hopes for her bright children. But in February 2001, her dreams were shattered when her son, gripped by paranoid delusions due to an undiagnosed mental illness, stabbed his friend and mentor of many years who succumbed to his injuries. What began was a nightmare as Farhat struggled with guilt over her son's crime, heartache over the deterioration of her son's mental health, fear for her son's safety in the Ottawa Carleton Regional Detention Centre (RDC), and frustration with a corrections system she discovered to be seriously flawed. But in the process, Farhat became an advocate for the rights' of prisoners and their families and reached out to the support networks that she could find in Ottawa.

For me, Black History Month is not only about celebrating the contributions of my fellow Black Canadians, it is about remembering the impact that the enslavement of Black peoples has had on Africa and the world. It's about building on the strengths of the Black community in Ottawa by working across the socio-economic, religious, ethno-cultural, and linguistic differences of the diversity of individuals who make up our community. It's about examining how anti-Black racism still exists within Canadian society and recommitting myself to challenging it by trying to understand why it persists and how it affects my life and the lives of my fellow Black Canadians.