The Rivers of Hope Collective is a grassroots organization led by young Muslim change-makers who are challenging Islamophobia through education and the arts.

Sidrah Ahmad is a writer and researcher based in Toronto, Ontario. She co-founded the Rivers of Hope Toolkit for survivors of Islamophobic violence. Her writing for mainstream media and academic research has helped to bring the reality of gendered Islamophobic violence into public discourse in Canada.

Her research on this subject has now been published in the Journal of Gender-Based Violence.

You can follow Sidrah on Twitter here.

The Edmonton Muslim community was faced with Islamophobic aggressions within a span of two weeks in late January and early February of 2019. As a growing community of over 40,000 strong adherents or approximately 5.5% of the Edmonton population, this climate of hate rearing its ugly head so fresh into the new year, instills unease as to any potential escalation of Islamophobic acts and/or rhetoric with provisional and federal elections on our doorsteps.

On January 29th, 2017, six Muslims were murdered at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, a mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood of Quebec City, Canada.

Six people were killed including Ibrahima Barry (aged 39), Mamadou Tanou Barry (aged 42), Khaled Belkacemi (aged 60), Aboubaker Thabti (aged 44), Abdelkrim Hassane (aged 41) and Azzedine Soufiane (aged 57)

Ryan Slobojan is the founder of the Push Back the Darkness initiative aimed at encouraging all Canadians to place a light in their windows at 8 pm on Tuesday, January 29th in commemoration of the victims of the Quebec Mosque Attack and as a sign of commitment to "push back the darkness" of ignorance and hate in Canada. The initiative has also helped to support the organizing of vigils in cities across Canada.

Ryan and his daughter Elisabeth had the chance to visit the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec on January 18th.

My name is Ryan Slobojan, and I live in Pickering, Ontario. When I first heard about the attack on the mosque in Quebec City on January 29th 2017, I was devastated.

The owner of the Wellington Diner in Ottawa has apologized for posting an Islamophobic photo on the Diner's Instagram in 2016. 

With the 91% increase in reported hate crimes against Muslims, the Muslim Council of Peel reacts to the Peel Regional Police hate crimes report with no surprise.

Anti-Muslim incidents constitute largest segment of hate crimes in Peel Region.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), a prominent civil liberties and advocacy organization, is deeply concerned by a new report submitted to the Peel Police Services Board on hate-motivated crime today. The report reveals a 168% increase in police-reported hate crimes from 2016 to 2017, the majority of which were motivated by anti-religious bigotry.

For Sexual Assault Awareness Month (#SAAM), let’s raise awareness about Islamophobically-motivated sexual assault, and all forms of sexual violence Muslim women face.

Muslim women are most often the targets of Islamophobic violence in North America and Europe, with visibly Muslim women – women who wear hijab and/or niqab – being particularly vulnerable. Black Muslim women also face heightened vulnerability to Islamophobic violence, because of the combined effect of anti-Black racism and Islamophobia.

When we think about Islamophobic violence against Muslim women, we often picture a woman being yelled at to “go back to where you came from” or even physically attacked. What’s been missing from the conversation however is the fact that Islamophobic violence can take the form of sexual assault.

Over the past year, I conducted research interviews with 21 Muslim women survivors of Islamophobic violence in Toronto and its surrounding regions. Throughout these interviews, Muslim women of all ages told me about being verbally harassed, threatened, and physically attacked. Importantly, some of them also told me about incidents of Islamophobically-motivated sexual assault.