Stories

In 2019, Amira Elghawaby was a speaker for TEDxOttawa in Ottawa, Ontario.

I am a white, Christian, fourth-generation Canadian. Because of these factors alone, my life has been infinitely easier than it has been for many Canadians. I personally have never experienced racism. When I say I am from Canada, no one ever asks me where I am really from. I feel I can openly practice my religion, including wearing a cross around my neck, without being harassed or accused of being an extremist. In short, I was born with an incredible amount of privilege.

When picturing a successful artist or painter, many people assume they must have been some kind of child prodigy whose finger paintings were far above and beyond the rest of their class.

"In Shaykh’s Clothing" is an initiative that has been set up to support victims of spiritual abuse within North American Muslim communities. One of the issues people often come to them with is spiritually abusive forms of fundraising and misusing funds by Muslim organizations.

Recently, Ottawa media has been buzzing about how there is no dedicated Ottawa Police Service hate crimes unit, after anti-Black racist graffiti was found on a home in Ottawa's East End.

When I was a school principal I encountered a question that continues to be a source of debate. Should the national anthem be played in Islamic schools?

The surgeon asked me for the second time, “So are you here alone?”

Ilyas Mao is a Somali-born Canadian nasheed artist, composer, songwriter, and producer.

When one thinks about the stand-up comic scene, it tends to come across as a male dominated field and not exactly easy to break into as a Muslim woman of colour.

Celebrated on the 21st day of each February, International Mother Language Day, or Ekushey February in the Bangla language, marks the day students in Bangladesh lost their lives in an arduous effort to preserve their linguistic rights.

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.

Being the hub of Canada’s oil and gas industry, Calgary may not seem like the sort of city that harnesses creative energy the way cities like Toronto or Montreal do. Take a second look, and you might discover that there’s more to this city than meets the eye.

Editor's Note: After the publication of my reflection on CBC's documentary about polygamy among Muslims in Canada, we have received numerous responses from Muslim Canadians whose lives have been impacted by polygamy in Canada in both positive, but mostly negative ways.

Humility is a great teacher, if we let it do its work. As a community figure committed to equity and social justice, I strive to continuously learn and often, that means learning from my own mistakes, however embarrassing.

Toronto-based Somali Canadian visual artist Riya Jama shares a story from her childhood whose moral reminds us to "Be kind – for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about."

Malaysian Canadian Sabariah Binti Hussein's charitable activism made Canadian headlines in 2017. This news soon reached her homeland of Malaysia, making her an instant celebrity.

Somali Canadian author Fartumo Kusow has spent much of 2018 traveling across Canada, the United States, with stops in the UK and Somalia, speaking about her first English-language novel "A Tale of a Boon's Wife", published by Second Story Press.

Edmonton is a city with a small town reputation, and yet it is home to North America’s one and only Muslim Film Festival.

"In Shaykh’s Clothing" is an initiative that has been set up to support victims of spiritual abuse within North American Muslim communities.

Every Tuesday, Aaliya Jaffer walks into the principal’s office of the As-Sadiq Islamic School and greets the administrative staff with a cheerful smile and “Salaam alaykum”. She signs herself in and gets ready for a full day at school volunteering with the grade 3 teacher and her students.