Webinar
Omar Suleiman – Always Under Scrutiny – Islamophobia and the Muslim Community
AI: Summary ©
The National Council of Canadian Muslims and CCM is holding a virtual event to discuss Islamophobia and the Muslim community. The speakers will be presenting various aspects of Islam, including the history and thinking of Islamophobia, challenges faced by the community, and potential systemic discrimination and violence targeting Muslims. The community is working to build bridges of support for those affected by mental health discrimination claims and addressing issues like mental health discrimination claims. They are also providing resources for mental health support and hosting a Day of Judgment event. The community is also working to build bridges of support for those affected by the attack and addressing issues like mental health discrimination claims.
AI: Summary ©
everyone my name is Sonia Omer and I'm the director of Legal Affairs at the National Council of Canadian Muslims and CCM. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you all to today's virtual event, where we will be discussing Islamophobia and the Muslim community hosted by yaqeen Institute in collaboration with nccam and Almagro Institute. It is my pleasure to be your emcee today and to introduce you to our esteemed speakers, who will explore various aspects of Islamophobia. Please note that at the conclusion of our presentations, we will have a quick we will have a question and answer session and you will have the opportunity to ask our panelists questions
towards the end. But before I turn to our panelists, I want to provide a brief introduction to nccm in the work that we do, and CCM has a mandate to protect human rights and civil liberties, challenge discrimination, Islamophobia, and advocates for the public concerns of Canadian Muslims. We engage in various types of work, including education, outreach, advocacy, policy, media engagement and support and legal services. The cases of Islamophobia that members of the community have reported nccm are wide ranging and often tend to be very multifaceted that can be devastating to our community, the victims and their families. Our community witnessed the tragedy of an innocent
brother horrifically murdered in front of a legend in Toronto, much is being vandalized or threatened woman being physically assaulted in public spaces because of the hijaab. members of our community being discriminated profiled are the target of Islamophobic slurs, the list of his long list of Islamophobic incidences goes on. And the rise of white supremacy and online hate issues that nccm is actively tackling have only fueled Islamophobia in our society.
What we need to be mindful of is that despite the global pandemic and the quiet streets, Islamophobia still continues to persist in our communities, and is in fact manifesting in more unique ways. As we approach the fourth anniversary of the tragic Quebec City mosque shooting, it's important that we reflect and engage in a much needed discussion on the existence of Islamophobia in our community. Because what is clear from all of this is that Islamophobia is rampant. It's a growing danger to our community and our loved ones. So unity, proactive steps and awareness are critical and absolutely necessary if we want to be able to combat this issue. How does Islamophobia
manifest and impact us? What are some of the challenges that the Muslim community communities facing? What can we do as individuals and as a community to counter Islamophobic narratives? These are just some of the questions that our speakers will be addressing today.
And with that, I will now turn to introducing our first speaker shake Nava disease, who will be speaking to us about the history and thinking of Islamophobia at an institutional level. chimpanzees is from Montreal, Canada. He graduated from the Islamic University of Medina with an associate's degree in Arabic and a Bachelor's in Sharia. He currently serves as the director of religious and social services for the Islamic Information Society of Calgary and is the director of public relations for Al Mohler, Canada. And with that she cozies alternate to you. Does that look so we have Thank you so much. This modality might not Hakim Al hamdu, lillahi Rabbil alameen, wa sallahu,
wa Sallim, wa barik, ala nabina Muhammad. Why that early, he was a big man in my bed. My dear brothers and sisters salaam aleikum wa Rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh.
In US panela, this event being put together, it brings about a lot of emotions. And they think for me, the most powerful emotion that I recall and remember, is the Juma that took place right after the Quebec mosque shooting. And there was a fear in the community that it would be repeated across Canada. So every mosque was on edge, every mosque was encouraged, to be vigilant, and to be aware of anything suspicious at that time. And when you're giving a horrible, you will get a view of everyone in the room. And you can sense the fear that anytime someone walks into the machine that isn't familiar, people had the sense of panic. And in the back of my mind, as I'm trying to focus on
giving the hope I just kept on repeating in my head, oh, Allah, protect us. after it was over in the Hamdulillah, nothing had happened. You know, I had this feeling that needed to be shared, that no individual deserves to live like this, and particularly as Muslims,
Canadians, you know, we shouldn't have to live in fear. So from that time, I wanted to discuss this topic from a more holistic approach and understand where it comes from. And humbled. I'm really glad that we've yaqeen Institute with nccm and with Almagro, we're finally able to put this together so Xochimilco to everyone that was able to help him put this together into all of our presenters. That
are here with me today, my esteemed colleagues that are helping out. So starting out, I will be giving a brief overview of Islamophobia, starting with the definition, and then I will be talking about some of the statistics that were publicly available. And then after that, I will be sharing some resources. So starting off with the the definition over here, this is from Todd H. Greene's book and the problem with definitions and I'm sure maybe most of us are going to talk about this later, because this is his or one of his specializations, Mashallah is that they're not unanimous. Not everyone agrees on these definitions. But I felt this was an appropriate definition for our
discussion. And that is the fear of the fear of and hostility towards Muslims, and Islam, that is rooted in racism. And that results in individual and systemic discrimination, exclusion, and violence, targeting Muslims and those perceived as Muslims. And this is a book that I thought was a great reference point, and one that I'll allude to in the in the resources section. But when we talk about Islamophobia, it's important to understand what definition we're using. And this definition that I chose for my presentation that talks about fear and hostility, so people can be afraid of Muslims and also be hostile towards them, and also be towards the religion itself, which is rooted
in racism, which is rooted in discrimination at an individual level, and as well as a systemic level, which can lead to discrimination, exclusion, and violence that targets Muslims. Now, particularly on this last point on violence targeting Muslims, what we've seen time and time again, it's mainly the targeting of our sisters, we rarely see. I mean, it's not that it doesn't happen, but we rarely see incidents where the brothers are attacked. So obviously, there's also this sense of * and wanting to, you know, prove strength and the weakness of Islam in the Muslim community that takes place. So there's a psychological impact that needs to be discussed, and
inshallah Dr. Solomon Wenzhou will be talking about that. Now, when we think about Islamophobia, is it something that takes place on an individual level? Or is it actually organized, and one of the books that I'll allude to later on, it's called the industry of Islamophobia, and how the far right actually organizes to be Islamophobic I believe it was either in 2015 or 2017, the industry was about $39 million $39 million, was pumped into the Islamophobia industry, to make North Americans particularly Americans afraid of Islam and Muslims.
The Runnymede report, which started in 1997, and had their 20th anniversary report in 2017. They talk about how the objectives of organized Islamophobia are eight, and I wanted to share eight with four with you over here and discuss them briefly. So when we talk about this organized Islamophobia, we're talking about how they have targeted messaging, that is very clear, very succinct, very easily understood. And it's not just the far right, that will promote this, you'll get to this from x Muslims, you'll get this from Muslims within the Muslim community that have, perhaps an inferiority complex, and others as well. So the four that I wanted to highlight from their objectives is number
one, that Islam is monolithic and static, by monolithic. What they're trying to make people understand is that ISIS represents Islam, And oh, by the represents Islam, basically, every extremist group that you can think of that has Muslims in it represents Islam, and they're all like that, and basically trying to prove that Islam is inherently violent. Now, by static, they're trying to say that it cannot accommodate to modernism and cannot live up to our modern day and age, and thus is not capable of addressing some of the modern challenges, as well as its practices being archaic and barbaric as well. Then number two, Islam is separate. And the other and we saw this,
particularly in France, recently, where this whole concept of Islamic separatism, you know, being spewed by the the President was very, very unfortunate. So it tries to prove that Muslims as a community, and Islam as a faith is very distinct from Western society, and they can't be a part of it. And they're very different. And thus, they need to be treated differently, as well. And they creates this sense of they're trying to take our way our values, they're trying to take away our tradition, they're trying to take away our lifestyle, and they hate our lifestyle. And perhaps, you know, we've heard this many, many times. Maybe when the clearest ones that I can think of is when
George W. Bush was Jr. was going to attack iraq. He had that famous quote is that they hate our democracy, right. So they tried to create this
separatists narrative of Islam and Muslims on how Muslims are the other, and they will never be of us, and they're distinct from us. then number three is Islam is inferior. And this is in terms of a lifestyle. And they'll often use misogyny and the, you know, portrayal of how women are treated and which isn't a reality, of course, in Islam, and to try to use that, that Islam is inferior and cannot, you know, accommodate a modern lifestyle, particularly when it comes to dealing with with women and other issues as well. They use education, particularly when they look at, you know, countries that have been colonized, and have been plundered of their resources. And our you know,
are not as advanced, perhaps, at an educational level, or at a financial level or the economic level, and thus their education system suffer. And they'll try to prove that, hey, countries with Muslims are not as educated. And then last but not least, the last one I wanted to share is Islam as the enemy. And you know, we have a quote from Robert Spencer, they are perhaps one of the biggest charlatans of, you know, expertise in Islam, that there is no Muslim version of Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. Or if anyone strikes you, on the right cheek turn to him. The other also basically saying that there's no compassion or mercy in Islam, which is so so unfortunate
that, you know, people actually buy into this propaganda, you would just open up the Koran literally, the very first verse that begins with the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the most compassionate, right? The second verse of the very first chapter is the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful, compassionate, and the merciful, and you find this there. So this portrayal of Islam is the enemy fits into this narrative. And they really exploited the presence of these extremist groups and trying to portray that Islam is at war. But in reality, I think we speak about this on a Canadian contest level, that there is approximately 1.31 point 2 million Muslims in Canada. And I
want you to think how many times have Muslims done anything in Canada, that would harm Canada or Canadian society. In fact, when we have the first migrated, documented migrants that came to Canada, in the 1870s, up until 2006, when perhaps the first terrorism charges were laid against a Muslim, Canadian, you know, there's a large period of time, which shows us that the problem isn't with Islam and the Muslim community, but there are underlying factors that needs to be looked at when we talk about such matters. So these are the four objectives that I wanted to highlight there eight altogether, you can refer to them in the in the Runnymede report. These are some statistics I wanted
to share with you in chronological order. The Angus Reid poll in 2009 found that 60% of workers surveyed held an unfavorable view of Islam this had risen just slightly in 2013 to 69%. However, the same poll showed that the increase of Islamophobic attitudes in the rest of Canada was greater than it was in Quebec. So often we may have this assumption that Islamophobia is greatest in Quebec. But statistically, that may not be the case. According to this Angus Reid report, again, it is dated from 2013.
But it shows that there's a problem not just in Quebec, but all across Canada as well. A survey in 2012 shows that 52% of Canadians feel that Muslims can only be trusted a little or not at all. 42% of Canadians think that discrimination against Muslims is mainly their fault, meaning that Muslims are responsible for the discrimination that they face, which is just horrendous 2015 survey conducted in Quebec found that 49% of respondents would be bothered if they received services from someone wearing the headscarf or the hijab. In July 2016, a survey by the polling forum reported that only a third of Ontario Ontarians had a positive impression of Islam. And more than half
believed that mainstream Islamic teachings promote violence. Three quarters said that Muslim immigrants have fundamentally different values. A 2017 report shows that 51% of Canadians support government surveillance of mosques as opposed to 46% of Americans. And that is just alarming and shocking, that in this one element, Canadians can be more Islamophobic than Americans themselves. The fact that they feel that you know, government surveillance is needed and massage it is is a big problem. And then in 2017 and Angus Reid poll found that 46% of Canadians had an unfavorable view of Islam. My next slide, I had some major issues in trying to include it for some reason, it just would
not
saved with the new slide. So I wasn't able to include that slide. But it talks about the statistics, talk about a theory and a belief system. But how does it actually manifest itself and we see that it manifests itself in three ways. Number one is violence against women. And we have multiple examples of this. I can share three of them with you. In 2011, a Muslim woman woman wearing leather in the club was with her children when she was attacked in Mississauga. The attacker screamed at her and pulled her veil off. In the aftermath of the Quebec charter of values. Muslim women were attacked everywhere. And on September 17, a 17 year old Muslim girl was attacked in St. catharines. In 2015,
a pregnant woman wearing the hijab was attacked by teenagers in Toronto, and in 2022, Muslim woman in hijab were attacked by a 41 year old male in an Edmonton Mall parking lot. So that's violence against women. We have attacks on mosques that take place on December 31 2013. A bomb threat was made against the Vancouver mosque and the building was evacuated. In May 2014, a man tried to throw a molotov cocktail through the window of a mosque in Montreal in 2015, a day after the Paris attacks a mosque in Peterborough, Ontario was set on fire. And we had a similar incident that took place in Alberta as well. And in October 2020, Toronto Police confirmed that they were investigating threats
made against a local mosque. The messages received by the mosque included the threat to do a Christ Church all over again. So these are two examples. But obviously, the most heinous of crimes that took place was none other than the Cuba mosque shooting in January 2017, where six people were killed in 19 others were wounded. And that's, you know, one of the main objectives of this event is to highlight what took place in Quebec City, and to make sure that it never happens again, and to also highlight what we can do to help the mosque in Quebec City. inshallah I'm hoping most of the force that we have talks about their upcoming event and their fundraising. And then last but not
least, also remembering our Brother Mohammed Aslam, who was killed on September 12 2020, a volunteer at the IMO in in Toronto, and a caretaker of the mosque was senselessly killed without crime.
And these are two or perhaps the biggest Islamophobic crimes that have taken place. Now in terms of resources and am I'm very conscious of my time for my other presenters. These are resources that are available that I would recommend two books the fear of Islam, by Todd H. Green, which I quoted, and what is Islamophobia. This is a compendium edited by an artist named masumi. And also the summer for the industry by Nathan lean, which you can see the pictures of in terms of reports, you can read. The Runnymede report is great, out of the UK 1997 and the 2017 edition are phenomenal. There are other reports as well, those are basically related more to statistics like the Angus Reid report.
And then papers on islamaphobia. Two specific ones that I would recommend for those of you that are looking for academic resources, Sarah Wilkins laflamme, out of Waterloo and Sabrina foster degree out of McMaster. They both did, I believe, a masters and a PhD. So Sarah Wilkins was a master's in Sabrina was a PE doctor, Sabrina was a PhD. So these are papers that you can refer to that talk about Islamophobia in Canada, as well. Now, in conclusion, and subpanel. I love this picture so much in terms of how we respond to Islamophobia. So this is at a protest in unite a slum protest in Europe. And this sister must have left a lot of a lot. She shows her bravery and her pride in their
faith by taking that selfie, which obviously went viral. So now how do we respond to this? I think the biggest thing I want to highlight is make sure that we as Muslims report all hate crimes. We should try our best to reach out to the nccm whenever there is a hate crime and also to your local police department that has a hate crime unit. And yes, it is tiresome, yes, it is burdensome. Yes, it is difficult. Yes, it does take courage. But we have to make sure that things do get reported as statistically, these things are monitored so that groups like the nccn can better lobby for us. And the Muslim community can get the protection that it needs. Number two, one of the biggest mistakes
that we made as a community is that we were supportive of hiding our faith in the post 911 world. I personally believe that that backfired. And this is not to pass judgment on any one individual and the circumstances that they face. But as a community, we have to hold on to our faith and be proud of our faith and present our faith in all of our interactions. And particularly, this may sound counterintuitive to the concept of sincerity and our faith. But when we are doing public good deeds already, meaning they're already in the public sphere. Do not hide your faith at that time and try to allude to the fact that it is your
Say that encourage you to go do these good deeds, which is a true number three, increase your own literacy on Islamophobia and understand it, you can refer to the resources that I shared. And last but not least, educate and discuss. having these conversations in the workplace having these conversations at school or having these conversations at home and wherever you are particularly in our massage in in our communities are of the utmost importance. Because if we do not educate ourselves and we do not discuss, then there is a chance that we are not doing our role as Muslims as a part of enjoining good and forbidding evil in countering Islamophobia. I pray that Allah Spanos,
Allah grant is still free from Allah subhanho wa Taala allow us to learn from our mistakes and Allah subhana wa tada bless our community to do hate. And now let's protect the Muslim Ummah all over the globe. Love them, I mean, does that communicate in for your attention, and I'll pass it over now, Sammy has to introduce the next presenter, so that he can
just talk about chef Aziz, that was really, really good talk.
You know, just giving you in that definition of Islamophobia, the fear and hostility towards Muslims are those perceived to be Muslims in the fact that Islamophobia can be both individual and systemic, I find it
you know, there you said that they have been pumping in about $39 million
into the Islamophobia industry, just demonstrating how many how many resources are put into into fueling this
and, and how Islamophobia is manifesting and the three main ways that you, you mentioned, violence against women, attacks and threats on mosques and, and these are some of the some of the incidences that we are constantly getting at nccm as well. So as you mentioned, we do encourage individuals whenever there's a hate crime to report it to a TCM to report it to their police departments, because hate crimes are generally they're difficult to prosecute. But unless we actually report them and we take steps, we won't be able to push for the prosecution of these types of crimes. And so inshallah, thank you once again for your words. And, and so I'll move on to our next speaker.
Dr. Salama, much, much Sue, who will be discussing the psychological impact of Islamophobia. She is a psychiatry resident at McGill University, she obtained her medical degree at university demoniac. She advocates to fill the gap in mental health in the Muslim community of Montreal by leading workshops within the community and by being engaged in cultural sensitive training in her residency program. She has published a chapter in the book titled Islamophobia and psychiatry recognition, prevention and treatment, and has written another chapter in the upcoming book titled Muslim mental health. And Dr. Salaam, I'll pass it to you, then the clock has anyhow, thank you so much for this
very informative topic. So I'll discuss more of the psychological impact of Islamophobia. And ends on a positive note of how can you mitigate mitigate the effects on you. So there are three forms of violence such as David talked about, but there is multiple forms of how is Campbell phobia manifests.
And it's a big range and all of them are detrimental to one's psychology. But some are more overt, and some are less overt. So we know but the physical attacks, the verbal assaults, what we often define as hate crime, or discrimination, those have an impact on an individual, his whole family, his whole community, with fear acute stress disorder, PTSD, because you feel like your life was threatened or your dignity were threatened.
And it can really shake you but other forms such as bullying that a lot of our youth experienced at school. In fact, when Muslim parents are surveyed, 42% of Muslim parents report that their kids are affected by bullying. And often Muslim kids who are affected by bullying won't tell their parents because they want to protect them, they want to protect them from the knowledge that they are bullied for their identity for their religious beliefs.
And the vicious circle is that one force of
bullying is done or, or the comment or that legend demises bullying is done by authority figure teachers school personnel, which isolate even more the victim to not be able to do anything to change that state in their school. And it has a detrimental effect on identity building, feeling of belonging, self esteem because it happens at such a milestone in their development
microaggression which we've been talking more and more in the anti racist literature. We all have been
on the side of the receiving side of microaggression microaggressions are often called
question that we receive or comment that we receive that kind of reflect to us or otherness, our differences? That kind of question our loyalty sometimes.
And the often these interaction leave us angry, confused, wondering if we should have confronted them. For example, like being asked where you're coming? Where did you come from? Assuming I get often that Oh, you speak How can you speak some such a good French? or How come you have an accent? You don't have an accent. I mean, I'm assuming things about you.
That that that means that you are kind of dehumanized and seen as a as a homogeneous group. They see you as just their stereotypes. And often being like at the receiving end of this comment over and over again, is psychologically draining and reduces tolerance to stress and frustration. Of course, we see it in the media and the news recently, since the since the previous administration, us even if it was not in Canada, when
the hate crimes and incidents often spike during election during public debate, such as the charter value achimota mo has an app here in Quebec, the bill Bill 21, all those kind of legitimize the voices of racists and bigots who then feel
worldand to start posting online in the comment section, the headlines in the newspaper and all of this, we get bombarded with it. And and it impacts are a feeling of self esteem of belonging, and gives it a worry about our future and where do we put our place in this society?
Of course, we're to have a psychological impact. It's not just some phobia on its own, it's it interacts with all other risk factors for psychological for mental health issues, such as our age or bus drama, or immigration status. How isolated are we from people that look like us our temperament coping skills, so not to be reductionist, it's not just a simple phobia on its own, although the repeated pneus and the seriousness of these interaction or this, especially if they are violent, has a big impact on on people developing psychological sequelae.
And often, like Jacqueline COVID alluded to, she has these is that
people who are at the intersection of these vulnerabilities so Muslim, so gender vulnerability, your your, your woman, you are visibly Muslim with a hijab and often black woman so and they are also marginalized from their color of people of colors are often that most receiving and have multiple racist encounters.
And it leads to fear. And the hyper vigilant state, that is a fertile ground to develop anxiety disorders, because it's often caught you off guard, you're at work, you're interacting with a present for me with a patient, you don't see it coming and then you get a comment or something overtly racist, and you haven't anticipated so you develop this kind of hyper vigilance states always wondering, is it going to come from in my commute
in, in at my work, and you develop a bit of mistrust and suspiciousness, which is a barrier to seeking help when you develop panic disorders, or anxiety disorder, or, or, or, or feelings in your body
that are kind of reflective of the stressful living, it's also associated with depression. And often when you're depressed, you don't have the will to pursue justice or to do things to change your state. And you blame yourself for being weak and for being kind of you for being in that spot at the receiving end of such hate. And
not to find the support to be able to go out of the states. You don't want to share these events because again, you don't want to tell your loved one that you you have lived that because you don't want them to be curiously to also feel the same because they're they seem to they share the same identity that's being attacked.
And anger can be manifested and often in younger in our youth who will have behavioral reaction and won't fit in at school have difficulty achieving academically or disengage. And at the same time, what's difficult with anger, especially with young boys is that that's the truth. That's a stereotype young Muslim men who is angry. And so that anger that you feel inside, you're conflicted, you can show it you wanna you want to prove them wrong, but at the same time, it's legitimate to feel that way.
And youth are at a such a massive
Like it's such a developmental phase of building their identity and knowing who they are, that when we study their their acculturation process or kind of how they, they are able to manage their multiple identities, girls have even have more evenness and see their identity as fluid are able to reconcile them were often boys feel more fractured.
Maybe because girls kind of engage more in identity enhancing strategy, they want to defy the trope of being submissive. So they become super strong, they want to speak up, and that again, depends on their temperament. But those,
those identity enhancing strategies often makes them feel that they belong to a group. Whereas when, when you take a more passive stance, and you see these, that some of phobia is a fact of life, and you try to enhance your similarity to the majority and hide your identity, you'll start to resent your religion, your look your name, and and to be accepted, you will show more behaviors that will make you feel judged by the Muslim community. For example, you don't want to refuse going to a party, or you don't want to refuse this asset. So you will go, but then you will feel bad. And then it's a circle of shame, and more and more, you don't want to think about your religion. But But self
hate grows, and can lead to more problem, especially if you decide to deny your identity, but you still have anger because people still see you as Muslim. And you're still facing the same discrimination, even though you're trying to hide that part of your identity.
And you don't seek knowledge of your religion, or or you you don't have a good sense of self. Often these are fertile ground for violent extremist ideology. Because people who want to recruit, for example, they will use that feeling of shame and desire for redemption and this need to belong. So Islamophobia. And their trope of us being angry and dangerous is actually more of a risk factor of feeding, that that sense of isolation, and, and anger.
It has a community impact which is intergenerational, and we've already discussed it, but also an intern, some people will show within the community and internalized Islamophobia by blaming the victim by having a bit of hijab a phobia and not liking the hijab, because you have to be a model minority, and not make wave because Canada is so welcoming. And all these things that we are told that
that does not validate the sentiment when you're a victim of discrimination.
And often isolate us, Chef niveda told us about the lack of reporting a bit, but 60% of people victim of hate crimes or incident do not report it. And the reasons are multiple, but just to name a few. When you need to report, first you need to be aware of where to report, there is hate crime division in multiple police there is kind of a nonprofit organization by the nccm.
But this lack of awareness hurts at the end because then the statistics don't do not reflect the real state of affairs. There's also victim blaming, not wanting to relive the trauma, not wanting to not be taken seriously if you have to go to the police.
fear of retaliation, and, and also the fact that there's not there's a lot of mistrust in the system and mistrust in policing. And because of the lack of definitions around hate crime and high hate incident, it's left to the discretion of the police individual in front of you to decide if that is worthy of being called an incident or not. And it's very variable depending on provinces and and police station.
You are made to relive that vulnerability state and and and it's often a detractor to go and, and complain.
Of course, what I find more saddening, I think the pervasive effect of it is that it limit us from seeking help. When we have issues or we develop depression or anxiety or other disorders. Often we don't want to be in a relationship where we're gonna feel vulnerable with someone who is from the majority by fear of being judged or being misunderstood of our religious beliefs being blamed. So there's a lot of difficulty getting mental health care when there's a huge need and we often depend on the informal support system.
There is an informal support system like family, the community.
A couple ideas to end because I don't want to end on a negative note all of the impact, of course, there is resilience and coming in the community, we have the ability to counter those effect. And to strengthen ourselves. With the help of each one of us individually, we can do stuff but as a community as a whole and insha Allah, this is a sort of an important conversation of what we can do on an individual level and more on a community level. But some things to think about, that you can do.
The first thing that I would advise is to learn how to be a listener, how to ask or validate these experiences that people have, when they come to you and tell you about,
about interaction that made them uncomfortable without putting your own understanding of them on them, have this interaction on them, be able to support to engineer and validating does not mean that you agree, for example, with the with the thoughts or the action that that individual has taken, but at least you can ask them, What do you want me to do? Do you want an advice? Do you want me to go with you report? Do you want just me to lend an ear and when you're ready to do the next step, you'll come back. And that is very important, especially in these isolating time that is COVID in the pandemic, to be able to listen and validate. The second thing that I would say is that we all
have biases. And we have to reflect on our own biases, and how we maybe have internalized some of that Islamophobia and how we perpetrated on maybe members of our community that don't succeed and how we why we think that they didn't succeed or why we think that they have more difficulty.
And I think we have to commit to becoming anti racist in general, and to think about our biases and reflect on them to not do the same. perpetrate those same aggression that we receive on other people.
Explore our Muslim identity be probably Muslim, to not grow resentful of your own religion, because if you have doubts, and you're confronted, you're always being questioned about your belief and your identity, those that will grow, and you'll grow even more resentful of them. So explore them and avoid debate with ill intentioned people that I learned the hard way I used I, I am, I was outspoken as a teenager, I used to go into every debate, you just come to me and I will respond to you. And I realized that that was not beneficial to me not beneficial to the other person, because I was doing it to emulate the like not to humiliate the person but to, to prove a point or two to kind of
make them lose their words, not really, in a really conversational way. Now I only go I only debate ideas with people that are actually genuinely interested and generally open minded to understand more about religion, and it has helped me not to burn myself, burn out and shield yourself from the comment section, or the headlines so they don't cut you off guard and really leave you with with mixed emotion that dedicate a time of a day to read the news.
That will help you kind of keep that hospitals on that good impression of people assuming good of other people and not act on your fear and suspiciousness of other people to appear more guarded or put a make it more difficult for you to interact and have good interpersonal relationships and have a good character like the character of the Prophet Sall allottee within them.
And if you lose that husband, son, if you feel like when you're going out, you're imagining everyone looking at you with weird looks. Often we say behavioral behaviors change your feelings. So if you smile, you're going to feel more at ease and often.
The The, the reaction we'll have from other people is that they're going to smile back to you and you're gonna realize okay, I was not I wasn't I was wrong. They're not kind of looking at the with, with with anger with aggression.
And for me personally, learning more about Islamophobia, but also about hate in general and hates which restorick Where does where does it come from has helped me humanize it and see it more as coming and stemming from fear and ignorance. So
I it's not to justify hate but understand it helps me personally cope with it and keep my energy and my desire to help. And of course, if you have the energy and the skills, get involved, and encourage people like we said to report and inshallah if you have more questions, we'll have time.
Get back to me
To Sokoloff her sister song, I think it's actually interesting that you've pointed out especially like Muslim women I noticed from personally, whenever I'm walking down the street, I am often very fearful or and just like hyper vigilant state, just worried about or constantly aware of my surroundings and just, you know, just be on guard constantly. And I just find personally that that's something I've noticed something that constantly happens with me whenever wherever I'm going. And just the mention that you that you mentioned that people often do not actually actively seek help. And I think that'll be interesting when we're kind of in the question answer period to just maybe
discuss some of the resources that would be available to members of community if they do want to seek help them. Oftentimes people are, you know, they want to get help from a professional who's Muslim and can actually understand what they're actually going through, who can relate with them. And so there's certain barriers as well for people when they when they actually seek mental health
help from professionals.
And lastly, just like media and social media as well, and the the psychological impact the media and social media can even have on on individuals and some of the suggestions that you made as well about taking the time away from, you know, reading the headlines, or not going too much into media. But anyways, thank you for that was really, really informative. I will definitely have more of a discussion during the question answer period.
So I'll move on to introducing our next speaker
who is Shaykh Ibrahim Hindi. He's the religious director of a keen Canada who will be discussing countering Islamophobic narratives. Born and raised in Toronto, Mr. Hindi had an early passion to say Islam and encourage you to connect to Islam and bomb him. Brahim has been active in the Muslim community from a very young age and was serving as a regular coffee with some of the largest massages in Canada since a young age of 18.
So I'll pass it on to you.
Shake handy
Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala rasulillah you either Allah He also me He probably shot you saw that he was Sunni Emily senufo Cody is begin with praising Allah subhanaw taala sending Peace and blessings upon His Prophet and Messenger.
Can you see in July screen?
Yeah, okay, Abraham, but it's not in full presentation mode. Okay. Let me just figure that out. For a relatively young person. I'm not very tech savvy. So if you look at the top, you will see a section that says View right after review. So we see file home insert, draw design, transitions, animation, slideshow, review, and then view, click on View and then
click on that.
Have
one somewhere wrong?
can let me try something different.
I should just go to slideshow I think then you can. Just worse.
No.
Is there Can you see a no. screen? No. No. I don't think you're on the correct slideshow.
Okay, got it. Okay, perfect. Sorry for that. This will let him
you know, the question
that keeps coming up in our communities since, you know, even though we're four years away from the Quebec City, mosque attack, the question that a lot of people in the community continue to ask is How How did this happen? Why did this happen? I think as a community, we still haven't fully healed from, from what took place.
And so I've had a lot, you know, it's something that kind of sits in the back of your mind, you know, shuffling vein kind of spoke about this, but, you know, they gathered in the mosque that night to pray salted OSHA, and, and masjids all across this country. I mean, pre COVID anyways, we were gathering in the mosques. And we were praying the same prayers. And it's difficult to feel a complete sense of safety. After we knew what happened in Quebec, and worse is that like, we knew that Quebec City and what happened there was not an isolated incident.
You know, we felt that at the moment, even though there might have been other people who just kind of brushed it off as being an isolated incident. Just one person, one disturbed kid. We knew it wasn't isolated. And unfortunately, our fears were were, you know, came true, because later on just what two years later there was Christ Church, and the terrorist in Christ Church had the name
of the attacker from Quebec City on his on his gun, as if he's paying homage homage to him. And this past summer, you know, caretaker at the IMO Masjid was killed, stopped right outside of the mosque by a man with connections to neo nazis.
So when we try to think about this question, why did this happen? How did this happen? How can we prevent it from happening again, we knew that Alexander Bissonnette was consuming a great deal of online anti muslim rhetoric. And he was visiting many anti muslim websites, and he was going to social media pages belonging to a lot of anti muslim personalities. And this came out during his trial. So inshallah today and in the short time that we have, together, I want to speak from like a broad look at Islamophobia, how it functions and operates, but also its narratives are the things that they say about us as Muslims are the things? What is the rhetoric that is typically used by
these anti muslim personalities? And how do we reclaim our own our own narrative?
So what is the stem phobia? I'm not going to spend too much on this, you know, Chef navaid talks about, you know, the issue of definitions and, and whatnot. But, you know, I was speaking to a non Muslim colleague,
a while back, and one of the things he was saying was, you know, he's like, you know, stem phobia was a made up term, that some people, you know, made up in 2004.
And, you know, kind of speaking about as if, like, it's kind of this conspiracy, that we came up with this term or pushing this idea. And, you know, it's actually not true. Some of the earliest mentions of Islamophobia in the western discourse. You know, there's this quote from Elaine Cooley, and he is actually from, like, towards the end of the 19th century 1910 is this quote, and he actually mentioned this xenophobia by name. And when he talks about it, he talks about how the Muslim is seen as the natural irreconcilable enemy of the Christian and the European that Islam is the negation of civilization, barbarism, bad faith, and cruelty are the best that one can expect
from the Mohammed. And so he's speaking about how Europe typically sees Muslims, which is really basically the definition of Islamophobia, whichever particular definition you want to land on, that's basically the idea, the crux of it is anti muslim hatred and bigotry. And some people have a problem with the term xenophobia. So they say, you know, not everybody who hates Muslims is afraid of them. So it's not really a phobia. And they kind of poke at an etymological weakness in the word Islamophobia, trying to bring down the entire concept. And the reality is that any term has weakness, any, you know, slogan or term that you want to rely upon, is going to have weakness. I
mean, if you want to talk about anti semitism, you know, not Jews, not all Jews, or Jews, or not all the, you know, there are other people who are Semitic people, right. But it's referring to a phenomenon, right? anti Jewish hatred and bigotry, right? Even if you want to talk about racism, but the term race what is raised, when did race become, you know, an idea and literature and whatnot, like, you can poke weakness at any terminology, the reality is that these terminologies are pointing to a real phenomenon, right? So Islamophobia is real. And the other point that people bring up is that, you know, they say, well, we want to criticize the religion. And the reality is that, yeah,
people should be allowed to criticize theology. I'm a Muslim, I might criticize Christian theology, I might criticize Jewish theology. And I have no problem with with Jews or Christians, you know, criticizing Islamic theology. But there's a difference between criticizing a theology on an intellectual level, and versus, you know, hatred and bigotry and trying to present Islam as this unique other that that can't be tolerated in our communities that is trying to dominate us that's trying to destroy us, you know, there's a, there's a pretty thin line there, maybe a thick line between, you know, criticizing a theology because you don't agree with it, versus painting the
theology of religion, the adherence, as being this unique evil, that's something that's important, you know, when we talk about Islamophobia, it is real as a phenomenon, right? And the terminology, whatever, you know, whatever you want to say about the term or the word, it's real, as a phenomenon happens in our myths, and it's the crux of it is anti muslim hatred, and bigotry. Um, you know, the Islamophobia network that exists is actually from a website called xenophobia network.com, which tries to track this phobia network and all the money that goes into it, and all the different institutions or organizations that exist and you can see, you know, there's a fair amount of money
and definitely talked about this as well. There's a lot of money poured into this, right. And so there's a lot of money sent, that's supporting anything from bloggers and think tanks to media institutions, all of them depicting Islam in a very negative light. Now, a question that a lot of us, you know, should be thinking about is who's more likely to believe that Muslims are that Islam is inherently violent.
It's not really showing up here. They're supposed to be three options on this.
On the slide, so one of them is, you know, a 40 year old liberal atheist woman in Canada, or 65 year old evangelical man, and then in the United States. And the third option, I don't know why it's not showing up is, you know, 25 year old Muslim man in Canada. And so most people would think it's one of these two. And the reality is that it would be, you know, the third there is now, the third option, that the person who is most likely to believe that Islam is inherently violent, might actually be the 25 year old. And there's a lot of research in this area about internalized racism. Because one of the things that people don't understand is that the objective of the stem of full of
STEM phobic propaganda, all that money that we talked about, all that money that's being funneled into different bloggers, websites, all these social media personalities, we're talking negatively about STEM, the main objective of Islamophobia is not a 65 year old man, or you know, Joe Schmo from Acton, Ontario, or, you know, some person here or there, the main objective is actually you and me, the main objective of Islamophobia is to get people like you and me to internalize and accept their narratives, right? And you can see this reality if you don't believe me, Look, if Joe Schmo decides on on Facebook, you know, he sees all this anti muslim rhetoric and he decides, yeah, these Muslims
are terrible people. If he accepts that, what happens? Nothing. He becomes a follower of the standard phobic, seven phobic network. But if you and I accept it, and you and I are like, yep, Islam is 100% evil, we're gonna get a book deal, right, we're gonna get a tour around the country, we're gonna get to stay in all the fancy hotels and get to meet all the politicians, right? That's what's gonna happen if you and I accept that narrative. Right. So the main objective, they do want Joe Schmo to believe in their rhetoric, they do want, you know, random people to believe in what they're saying. But they want more than anything else, me and you to accept Islamophobic narratives.
And the reality is that many of us subconsciously will accept a lot of Islamophobic narratives, we will subconsciously start to think worse about each other. And that's and it's really important for us as Muslims to be, you know, optimistic around each other to push ourselves to, to have love for each other. It doesn't mean we can't criticize each other, of course, we can criticize one another. But we have to do it from a place of love. Because this type of you know, stem of phobic narratives in the stem of phobic, you know, tropes that are being pushed, are going to affect us, and they subconsciously do affect us. You know, one thing that I was mentioning to my wife once, once her and
I were visiting Vancouver, and we were driving through East Hastings road, anybody who's been to Vancouver and driven through East Hastings road or heard of it, you know, it's kind of loud, there's so much homelessness, over there a great deal of homelessness and drug abuse that takes place there. So we were driving through, we're seeing all the tents, and we're seeing so many homeless people. And I was thinking in parallel with all these people in this in this situation. And I started to think to myself, where are the Muslims of Vancouver? Why aren't they doing something about this? Why aren't Muslims trying to solve this problem? Why? And I started to think like, they must be lazy,
they must not care about what's happening to other Canadians, you know, these thoughts are going through my head, and some kind of law as if, you know, along wanted to answer this subconscious line of thought in my in my head. As I was thinking this, we drove by a storefront on East Hastings road, which was called the Muslim Care Center. And there's this big graphic outside of the storefront, and it says, you know, we serve 400 free meals a day. This is kind of like the Muslims of the city, I've actually been funding a center that they're providing assistance, providing food, trying to help all the people who are in you know, that desperate situation in Vancouver, and somehow a lot made me
think I was thinking so negatively about them. And yet they were actually doing amazing work. Why was I thinking so negatively about them, I must be subconsciously accepting on some level is anti muslim. And this is Spanish narrative that's often being pushed on some subconscious level, even I've been accepting it. And so it's important for us to understand, we are the main objective, we are the main target of Islamophobic propaganda. And for us to realize that and try to check our own biases and to try as much as possible to deal with one another in love knowing that this is the type of situation that exists. This is from a
piece actually on European Institute called internalize this type of phobia. Great, there's actually a much larger infographic with a lot more detail, but it kind of shows you that, you know, Islamophobia isn't only non Muslims exhibited by non Muslims towards themselves will internalize this them a phobia. And so here, even children and children are the most susceptible to these kinds of narratives. Young children, one in three young children didn't want to tell others that they were Muslims, one in two. I didn't know whether they can be Muslim and American, one in six children sometimes would pretend with their friends with their classmates that they were not Muslim. Right.
These are just
Some of the statistics that came out of this study, and this reality, this dynamic has actually been found in other minority groups as well. Right. So young black kids will sometimes internalized racism against black people themselves, and they will exhibit it themselves. Because we tend to internalize the things that have been said about us. And we tend to be more sensitive to the things that are often said about us.
Another important point for us to think about is who benefits from Islamophobia, right? Who's the one who benefits from it? So the reason why it's them a phobia, so well funded. And the reason why it has such a vast network across the world is because there's a lot there's a complex network of people who benefit from Islamophobia. I want to go you know, a little bit quicker because I have a number of slides to go through. But really, you know, there's authoritarian Muslim governments and governments who are treating their people within with authoritarian slant, who are repressing their own people, for them to justify to the broader world. Why are we repressing our own people? It's
easy for them to use a stem of phobia as a vehicle to do that. So they can tell the rest of the world Yes, we are denying our people human rights, yes, we are repressing our own people. But we are doing that because our people are Muslim, and they're therefore inherently violent and barbaric. And if we didn't do this, there would be anarchy, and there would be lack of, you know, stability. So therefore, we have to be repressive because the these are evil, and violent and barbaric Muslims, and governments that are in conflict and populations, whether it's China with the Uighur Muslims or India with the Kashmiri people, whether it's
my anmar with the Rohingya people who go on and on a very long list of nonsense governments want to justify how they are repressing. These Muslim populations are Muslim minorities, again, to say these are, you know, violent, barbaric Muslims, this is why we have to treat them like this. Islamophobia is a very convenient vehicle for them nationalist politicians who want to get votes, people like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen or even Emmanuel Macron. These days, you know, they can they know, they can get some votes, if they blame all of their failings and, and the failings of society on Muslims, rather than taking ownership and responsibility for it. extremist Muslim groups as well
like ISIS and apply that they like it's not slama phobia. phobia is good for business, because they want to recruit Muslims to join their, their cause. And if a Muslim is living in their country, and they go to the mosque in peace, and they go to work in peace, and they can earn a living and they take care of their family, you know, nobody's gonna say anything to them, right? They're living a, you know, great life. But the reality is that if if they if there is Islamophobia and they feel repression, then the recruitment tactics of groups like ISIS has actually benefited. So they might even conduct terrorist operations to create Islamophobic and descend the phobic environment in order
for them to take advantage of them. And then there's other factors and factions as well, many weapons manufacturers, mercenary organizations that also benefit.
What are the Islamophobic narratives? When we think about Islamophobia, we tend to think about STEM of phobia as completely modern, we tend to think of it as you know, based in technology, and it's, you know, proliferated online and whatnot. Reality Islamophobia is not modern, right? It's always existed. And you know, when you reflect on so many modern Islamophobic, narratives and xenophobic tropes, what they say today is basically the same they sent to our prophets.
And the same that was sent to other prophets and almost tells our Prophet now, you
know, whatever has been said to you, has already been sent to the profits before you they copy the same narrative one after the other, even almost a while Soviet, like are these are the enemies of Jesus and the enemies of Moses? Are they speaking to the enemies and suggesting to the enemies of Mohammed, tell them what to say? Allah asks us rhetorically, of course, they're not what I was asking this rhetorically because of how similar their claims are. So what are some of these claims? You know, for instance, Prophet muthambi has sent him he was sent an athlete to ultimate karate, kick them out of our country, you know, it's the same thing that is sent to us today, deport them,
ban them, right, this very rapid intolerance, that they can't even deal with any difference, kick them out of the city, ban them, deport them, send them back home, and no one asked me. These are people who purify themselves, why does it bother you that they want to drink or they don't want, they want to cover up and have modesty or they want to keep themselves pure as the panel law. This is something that has a similar dynamic that existed in the past and exists exists today. Why? Why does it bother you that a Muslim woman wears hijab and observes modesty, but it bothers them and it bothered them at the time of Ruth it has some other things that are mentioned as well what was said
to Prophet know how to his center. They said, We did we don't see your followers demand or aka Latina, aka Latino or they don't have idea. We see your followers as being people who are foolish who are brainwashed right? These Muslims are lowest class and they're brainwashed and they and the only person who would be able to remember the only woman who would wear hijab is a woman either being forced by her husband
Or she is, you know, just so foolish and so on educated, that's the only reason she would do this. And that's the same thing that we're seeing.
And then the same woman,
we don't see that you have any merit over us, which is also similar to what they say to us. You know, Muslims haven't contributed anything to society, even if we are, you know, pioneers, even if we are contributing so much on the frontlines of health care and the arts. And in so many different places in society we are contributing, they say they stay still, you haven't contributed anything to society. It's the same narrative today as it was back then. What they said to Musa alayhis salaam, that he said, in the Sahara for the pharaoh says, These are two magicians for Musa and his brother, Moses and his brother. And you know, to say that someone's in magicians to say, really, that they're
hiding something. Same thing they say about us today that these Muslims practice topia, they're hiding the real beliefs. And he says, Alan says that you didn't do your job.
They want to kick you out of your country, they want to take over your country. And they say this Muslims are coming with their Sharia law, and they're going to take over and they're going to breed so much, they're going to be the majority, even though we are 2% of the population, they think somehow we're going to take over all of this is nonsense, but it's the same fear mongering that fit out and uses against.
So how do we reclaim our narrative? inshallah I know we don't have too much time. But a few things are incredibly important. Number one, we have to say our story first, you know, the Prophet sallallahu sallam. When he was he was privately preaching Islam to his family to his friends, and Abu lahab. His uncle, who of course, hated Islam, found out that the Prophet had this religion and the Prophet Mohammed, sorry, Selim was worried that Abu lahab would be the first to tell the people about his religion. So the Prophet Mohammed Salah where he said, I went first. And he stood up in front of the people, and he preached his religion, because he didn't want the first mention of the
religion to be from Abu lahab. You want it to be from himself, we need to say our story first, the biggest mistake we do is we're quiet. And people say things about us. And we're quiet and not saying what our story is. First, we need to be the first to say our story, the first to say what our narrative is, what our story is, as Muslims in Canada, in this country, what our intentions are, what our dreams and desires and passions are, we have to say our story first, let them set the table and then us show up and try to you know, explain after they have already said so much misinformation. Secondly, we need to build our credibility, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam,
when he stood in front of the people to call them to a snap, he said to them, as we know, famously, he stood on the mountain of a sofa. He said, If I told you there's an army behind me, with their swords drawn, what would you say? What would you do IE, would you believe me and run quickly to your homes? Tell your family to go somewhere safe? Take your sword, take your weapons show up to defend your city, would you believe me and run into action? Or would you send someone to hit to double check and verify what I'm saying? They said to the profits of the law, at least a job not only can we never experienced the life of you, we've always seen you to be trustworthy. And then the Prophet
began has dealt with, he was credible already. We need to be credible in our societies. And we can be credible by showing demonstrating with our actions with our efforts with our sacrifice that we care about people around us, we care about others around us. We care about homelessness, we care about people in our communities, and we're there in the frontlines working with others, helping others. And by building that credibility, people will believe us and want to follow what we say and believe what we have to say. Third is to know the facts, we have to know what our religion is about. We have to know how to answer a lot of these calls. A lot of Muslims, you know, will read things
online that are really negative. And they want to jump into the comments and they want to say something and they want to say that this you know what you're saying about STEM is wrong, but they don't know how to respond to some of the things that are said about Muslims and European Institute is a great resource for you. There are so many articles on different topics that people bring up to try to attack Islam and attack our beliefs and attack our traditions that you can rely inshallah on some of those articles in order to respond to some of the things that are said, finally, and I'll end until on this point, it's important for us to break through the echo chamber, and social media.
You go on your social media feed, everything you say you see on your feed, or your friends are people who share your values are, you know, news articles that you already agree with? And but for other people who are in different communities, they go on their social media feed, and they see a completely different story. They see a story about how Muslims are harming people and are being oppressive and are being evil. And that's what they see over and over and over again. We're in different echo chambers, they don't see our story. We don't see burns, we have to break through the echo chamber. You know, a lot of mosques will do you know, open mosque day come to the mosque and
hear about Islam, but who are in that echo chamber is going to want to go to a mosque, none of them are going to want to, we have to go to their places. We have to go to their spaces and speak to them and try to break down the barrier that exists between us because there is a virtual, invisible barrier between us and other communities. Even in our country in Canada. I've tried to do this myself, go to different churches go to different synagogue, try to build a relationship with different people.
And by doing this, you might, you know, get to know them, and they might get to know our community. But when they see you see you in person, that relationship with you in person, a lot of the misconceptions and misinformation they have starts to melt away. And so that's something we have to do. We can't sit back and say we're right. They're wrong. Yes. They might be wrong on a lot of these issues. We have to actually break that echo chamber, go into their spaces, get to meet people in person, go to your local mosque, say, can we build a relationship with a local church? Can we find a way to build a relationship with them? Do an event together with them? Is there a way we can we can,
we can, you know, and they might be resistant to it. But it's incredibly important if we want to build
if we want to build these relationships, and if we want to break down some of the negative stuff that's said about us, because when they deal with us, and they know us in person, then when they see these really terrible things on social media, they're going to be able to say, you know what, I know a lot of Muslims in my local mosque, they're not like this, I don't think this is really true. And that's the only way in trouble that we can do it and ask Allah subhana wa tada to allow us to be successful in this regard. And ask Allah subhanaw taala to lift from us a lot of these difficulties and these hardships related to stem phobia and to keep us from religion.
Sokoloff, Ebrahim and shaker brain.
You know, I think that a lot of the aspects you mentioned, it can be applied to our day to day lives. Just you know, we understand that there are a lot of Islamophobic narratives and tropes that are out there, whether it's labeling a person, Muslim, a terrorist, or, you know, the misconception of women being submissive of Muslim women being submissive or forced to wear the hijab, a lot of the narratives are fueled in the media itself. So I think that, you know, your the four points that you raised about how we can, you know, reclaim the narrative or counter the narrative, you know, telling our story first, I mean, that's something that can definitely apply, whether it's in your workplace
or it's a university, you know, brewing, building your credibility through your actions, knowing the facts, what is what is our religion, you know, how do we respond to a lot of these misconceptions that people might have about Muslims. And lastly, you mentioned breaking through the echo chamber, just you know, going more to their spaces, break down those barriers and engaging with, you know, individuals, whether it's of different faiths and just having those relationships.
That was helpful, just talk a lot higher.
I'll move on to my next introduction.
Speaker is Omar Khan, who's the Director of Outreach and partnership development for the UK Institute. He was born and raised in Montreal, he'll be presenting on aging Institute and resources that communities can implement.
Just like Malika and sisters and we have Michelle on so everyone hope you're doing well. I just want to take a moment and thank the speakers and handler that have been here so far. Mashallah. Chef COVID Michelle, as always a pleasure ship Ibrahim, Dr. Salah Mashallah, really, really nice to see all of you and brother Mustapha, Michelle, lows I think up and coming home to the law. So it's an honor and a pleasure to be here with you guys. From the European Institute. We love to, we'd love to have these type of events. We have loved to have these amazing individuals, Michelle led to come and really share something that is different, Michelle, I'm going to keep it very short so that we can
move into the program and I'm sure you're all Mashallah excited for our next speaker. So what I wanted to touch upon very briefly with you guys is one of the key resources and 100 ila, you know, shitara he mentioned it really, really well with with talking about the way that our communities have been influenced what they want their picture their agenda. And and there's two really crazy statistics that just kind of always, really, really scare me. Um, it this is an American study that was done. And it said that basically, from American born Muslims, one out of every four American born Muslims no longer identifies themselves as a Muslim. And this is just a scary statistic. and
Canada folks is not far behind. Muslims are growing up in this culture in this society, and they're not finding religion. They're finding Islamophobia. They're finding doubts, and they're losing their faith. Another study that was done said that one out of every two Muslims when they have a question, they don't go to shake Ibrahim Hindi, they don't go to COVID azeez. They go to Google, right? And so she had Google, imagine someone writing, you know, are women oppressed in Islam? What do you think Google is going to tell you? You know, what is Siri going to say? If you imagine someone saying, is the Prophet Mohammed sincere? So I send them a sincere a true prophet, or was he a phony? What is
Google going to tell our youth? And so soprano, the yaqeen Institute has been working tirelessly to really conquer the online field and just make presence so that people can find us the articles that we have there. But we've also spent a lot of energy focusing on the other 50% the other half of the Muslims that when they have questions, they go to their friends, they go to their family, they go to their teachers, their Sunday schools, but you can imagine the same challenge. What if you were to go to your mosque and say, I have a problem I don't know as a woman where I belong, and the Imam says, you know, sister, that's not a good discussion, you know, go home and I'll send you a message later.
Is that the message
That's really going to help the other 50%. And so from the yaqeen Institute, Michelle law, we focused heavily on creating resources, Michelle law, from our articles from our research papers that can benefit the community. The one that I'm going to present today is one of my shell on my favorites, which is the team curriculum. We've developed a high school supplementary curriculum for like grade 910. And so this is good for Sunday schools, Islamic schools, and of course, Mashallah The best part of it is it's completely free. And I just want to take you, like, show you guys Michelle, I know very few of you are probably in that age group. Maybe you guys once work like years
ago, Mashallah. But I think you can acknowledge and understand much of the benefit of it. What topics do we cover in our curriculum? We cover the case of Allah's existence we cover Why does God asked to be worshipped? What's in it for me? The proofs, the prophet, the poor and the living literary miracle? And Subhanallah How many times have you studied at a Sunday school at Islamic school wherever it may be? I'm not sure how many montrealers are here, the MC q IC q Mashallah iccm wherever you're from Mashallah. But when's the last time that you've seen youth where they studied? Mashallah, see all you could ask them? How old is the prophets will set them when this happened? You
know, how many kids did he have this that they can give you the answers? But if you were to ask them, How can you be sure he was a genuine prophet? Would they be able to answer the question? How many classes do we have the teach hold on and then the hips and it's beautiful, Michelle? But if you were to ask them prove to me the Quran was not written by a man. What What are you saying? And more importantly, if we were to ask them, Does God really exist?
What would they say? And and so 100, another yaqeen Institute has chosen to really focus heavily on this. We spent about a year folks developing this curriculum. These are our four first four units, we have six of them Mashallah. The other two units that we have covered Islam in everyday life, environmental ethics in Islam, and yet Ian's approach on curriculum, folks, it's not the old school teaching from up to down. It's teaching through active learning through discussions through questions through videos, why did the prophets will set them teach us not to waste water? Why should we recycle as Muslims? And not just one little 20 minute speech, Mashallah the yaqeen Institute has
three to five lessons on each of these units. And the final unit folks is Islamic mindfulness, connecting Islam to your everyday life. Imagine if we, when we were younger, we got this Michel, amazing experience learning curriculum, being able to delve into issues being able to ask questions, and of course along the way yochanan suit is there for you, any institution organization that wants to run any of these Curriculum Units of hamdulillah we give them the outline, we give them the download, everything is completely free. And I'll say that again, it is completely free. And I remember that, you know, they asked Dr. Almost no, man, why is it free? Like why don't you charge
for one unit, you know, Mashallah, everyone will make some money, I want to be happy. And he said something really profound. He said, Islamophobia is free.
And he said, if we don't have an alternative that's free and accessible, what will happen to our communities? How many laws will they keep on spending and banning our Muslims and Muslims, and how many Muslims will be supportive of this thing, this is backwards, this or that. And so 100 every resource from your teen Institute, it is free and inshallah it will always be free. It comes Michelle with accessibility, you don't need to go straight to the FEMA institute.org backslash curriculum, you got it. You can download it, use it with any Sunday school, high school, you can even use it at home. Go ahead, Michelle. That's all for you guys at home vanilla. And last but not
least, it comes with support, whatever level of support if you guys need to have monthly meetings, if you need teacher training, whatever you need to be able to empower our youth. Your teen is here for that. And we thank all of you, Michelle, for being here. The units are really beautiful, we get amazing feedback on how they're broken down the videos, the activities, the PowerPoint assignments, why am I sharing this all with you? No, you're not I'm not expecting you guys to be teachers or open up a high school or whatnot. But if you guys Michelle, I know anyone in the community can benefit from this. This is an amazing way to end off this workshop for us or this Michelle webinar is for
you to take some of this look into our resources see what fits for you see what fits for the community and if anywhere along the line you guys need anything, please feel free to reach out my name is Armand Han my email address is right there, Claudia kinsella.ca because you got to represent Canada Mashallah. And inshallah I'd like to end off here and pass it back on to such as me have direct mail off and and everyone
does that philosopher brother Omer, we really appreciate that you came yesterday was able to provide a lot of these accessible resources to the members of the community. So we encourage everyone to please you know, use them.
Take advantage of them inshallah, we hope they'll be helpful. And our final speaker is Mr. farrokh. He is the chief executive officer of the nccn National Council pain Muslims. And he'll be presenting on Lacy t secularism and Bill 21 in Quebec, will serve as a lawyer who completed his juris doctorate at the University of Alberta and Osgoode University at Osgoode. Hall at York University, and he earned his Master of Laws UC Berkeley in California. He previously served as a senior political staffer to provincial cabinet minister where he worked on various legislative and policy initiatives.
is also a published writer and commentator on issues related to K Muslims, human rights and civil liberties and public policy issues including Islamophobia, national security. So I'll pass it on to Mr.
Michael Harrison. Yeah. And
before I, I think I would be remiss not to
sincerely thank Canada for organizing this. You know, Mashallah, your pain is really leading the way on so many things that I think
our esteemed brother Omar, I think, effectively kind of canvassed all of the incredible things that your team is doing. And it's, of course, also a logarithm Institute. A big shout out to all the incredible work he's been doing there. And Dr. Xu, Mashallah incredibly insightful approach to looking at answering these questions about the psychological impact of social phobia? I realize it's late stage. And what I guess here, Eastern Canada note 724 interview.
But
I wanted to essentially, you know, and tell us a little bit of time talking about latency to secularism.
And given the time and given where we're at, I think would have condensed my, my presentation, and just make it a little bit more of a conversation from the heart. So it was from the Psalter sermon out of stone on it.
So, where are we at?
It's 2021. And if you are a Jewish person in Canada, you're not allowed to work in one of our provinces and become a teacher. If you're a Muslim, you're not allowed to work a job and become a prosecutor. This is in our second most populated province in this country.
The reality is that many times our community looks down to our southern neighbors. I'm talking about rst, like the rest of Canada. You know, we look down to our southern neighbors, and we're like, oh, my God, I don't know what's going on down there. And it kind of gives us the sense of smugness, almost that you know, things here are amazing and incredible, and nothing really is going wrong here. But the reality is that nothing could be farther from the truth. The reality is that we are not too far out from the Quebec City mosque attacks, which happened obviously, almost four years ago this day.
The reality is that last year, almost at this time, I was sitting beside a window, nobody.
At the third video, no, the third commemoration of the Quebec City mosque attacks, and Amun was a hero of our community, every single from my perspective, Muslim in North America needs to know a name. Because when the man who attacked the Quebec City mosque attack the wall at the masjid, Ayman jumped in front to shield the people around him from from the bullets of Bissonnette.
And he was wounded so severely, that he's now effectively paralyzed.
And so, when when we talk about Islamophobia, these are not just kinds of concepts, intellectual concepts. These are very real concepts. And the reality is that the same descendants are the children of the folks from from the victims of the Quebec City mosque massacre, today, because of who they are, if they choose to wear hijab, if they choose to wear other religious symbols are not allowed to become
a just a teacher, that knowledgeable police officer in this province that they're that we literally bled for.
And I think that that is at the heart of the problem with Bill 21. Now, of course, just to for those who don't know,
Bill 21, which is that's what it's commonly referred to, but it's now obviously been passed legislation, called the AC t act, is a piece of legislation in Quebec, that bans Jews, Muslims, six
people of multiple faith groups from becoming teachers, police officers, judges, and be involved in other public sector positions.
Now, you might sort of say, Oh, well, that doesn't sound like that can be a thing in Canada. Don't we have like a charter that protects us?
Don't we have like, you know, pieces of legislation that's supposed to prevent things like that from happening.
And that's exactly why the, the Quebec government invoked what's called the notwithstanding clause, which essentially operates as sort of quasi emergency powers within the Canadian state. There
contention is that by utilizing the notwithstanding clause, it essentially prevents us from engaging in review of Bill 21. And that AC tact. Obviously, we're in court right now. And we just finished making our arguments
in Quebec quite recently.
As to why we don't think that's the case, along with many other groups like the Kane civil liberties Association, and many others that I think are important to be supporting right now.
I think holiday is that I think as we go into the fourth anniversary of the convexity machine, attack, I don't think I have the words
to really describe what this means, especially considering that the attacks against the convexity machines cynically are not ending.
So I mean, just in May of 2019, somebody walked onto the premise of the masjid, and started to violently assault some of the worshippers, ask them for their passports and yelling at various Islamophobic and racist rhetoric. And the reality is that if you go to the society today, and I what something that I find it a disgrace for us, within the Canadian Muslim context, if you go there, the most of the has still not been fully rebuilt, since the attack of the Senate. So if you go there, there's still like these large metal sheets that cover everything. And that's part of what has led us and been pushing us around the green square campaign, to make sure that the families of the
victims and the see scout IQ continues to be financially supporting. So I encourage you all, as you do get, as we do go towards the end of this week, take the time to, you know, even if it's $5 $10, take the time, donate a little bit to support the CCI q in this agitated that we all owe to ourselves to support this important institution. And to make it a place where of course, not only, you know, can work Canadians go there and see the impacts of Islamophobia. But also for the folks that live there, that work there that breed there, they need to be supported. And we all owe them that at the very least.
Now, I mean, I'm happy to talk, you know a lot about the ECA, I'm happy to talk about the question of negative rights and the charter.
But what I what I think is the reality of where we're at is that right now, the state of the law, as it is right now, in Quebec, is that under Bill 21, we have workplaces where colleagues are supported by the law.
For wearing a coupon, we have a place where teachers from religious minorities feel bullied into changing who they are in order to feel accepted, and to go about doing their jobs. And most of all, I think it takes all of us in Canada in a dangerous direction. It shows that we are willing to essentially break, you know, some of the most cherished of our constitutional values, in order to placate those amongst us who want to see the world in terms of us versus them. And today, as a nation, you face criticism from the United Nations on Bill 21. And the world watches as we in Canada, and many of our leaders refused to speak on this issue, because of pure fear of what you
know what the ramifications of that could look like.
And the reality is that, I mean, I don't think that we can fully understand that I
without understanding the backdrop of when Bill 21 is introduced, we can't understand it without understanding what it was like, and what it's like for him and their body to wake up every single day.
We can't understand it without understanding how
this continued focus. His continued attempt to try to marginalize the her are already vulnerable communities.
And what that does to the psychology I think, I think Dr. Wenzhou very accurately talked about two of our communities.
And so I think I'll end on this point, our brother Malcolm X, Monica Chavez, famously said in one of his great speeches, it's freedom for everybody or it's freedom from nobody.
So we at nccam. And I know that all of you here in this conversation, we refuse to accept the status quo. And I and I, every single Canadian, every single person watching this, to refuse to accept that, because the reality is that look at what we've been able to accomplish when we work together. A few years ago, ncci worked with organizations like the Kenyan civil liberties Association, and we were able to defeat the Quebec government in courts on Bill 62. Which bad women
More than a call from accessing public services now we're in court on both 21 and we're working together just today you know a lot
at in the House of Commons emotion was passed you know you you heard from shifting your views on from sugar in Hindi on the attack and and tobacco
the that resulted in the death of Muslims is
since his that we at NC Sam along many other groups have been fighting day and night to make sure that we dismantle white supremacist groups like the oh nine a that the individual who killed brother all Muslims I was connected with.
And the reality is that today in the House of Commons and motion was passed, to condemn white supremacist groups, and to also call for organizations like the proud boys to get listed. And of course, there's many other parts of that we have to make sure that it's balanced, we have to make sure that we're critiquing anti terror legislation at the same time, all of those components need to happen. The reality is that when we stand up together, and I think this call is is a wonderful indication of that, when you have you know, so many incredible organizations joining hands in sha Allah, the future is bright,
and in our fight against some phobia rolling together, and we're going to alternate back to syncro.
To cycle affair, Mustapha, that was really, really helpful. Just for the interest of time, I'm gonna I'm going to switch to to
posing some questions. And if there's any other questions that are coming from the audience,
they're more than we can take those questions as well.
And so we'll just kind of open the floor to any discussions. And if there's anyone who wants to chime in,
I'm more than welcome to so just like the first question that was asked is what? How can non Muslims support the Muslim community when it comes to Islamophobia and just dealing with this particular issue?
I know it's gonna be a challenge that no one wants to step up and enter into question. I know, it's always most difficult. The first questions, I'll take the lead on this one inshallah. Number one, I would highlight a great event that's coming up on Friday, with sister Mira and a couple of other ladies as well, on how to build ally ship against Islamophobia. So if you go to her Facebook page, there's that event on how to build ally ship, I think that's a great starting point, and discussion on that. Number two, I think just being human, like, that's the most important thing, like loving for each other, what you love for yourself. And when the Christchurch incident happened,
it was phenomenal, the number of non Muslims that showed up and build circles of trust and circles of power around mosques, to show their support, that they will not allow this to happen.
So I think things like that. Number three is, you know, getting to know Muslims. Statistics show strongly that the more people know Muslims, the more positive their their perception of of Muslims actually is. So reaching out to Muslims, getting to know them going to community events, inviting Muslim public speakers, to speak at those events. I think these are all important things. And then, you know, as Dr. Said, I mentioned, challenging our biases, perhaps is the most important thing that needs to be done by ourselves, just sitting in silence and trying to understand where do our biases come from? Why do we have these biases, and then challenging those biases as well. So those would be
some of the points that I would mention. And I'd love to hear what others have to say as well.
I mean, I would agree with everything. Chef head said, I would just add, you know, what I mentioned,
about breaking down the,
you know, the echo chambers that exists in communities, right, like where
people, their entire perception of reality of politics of everything is shaped by their social media feed. And if you know, our communities are so far apart from each other, that's a problem. So if there's people who are outside of our community, who feel sympathetic towards us, that's great. We need your help to get access to other communities, we need your help to take our message to other communities. We need your help to help us get represented in other circles where we're not. Because if we can't get in those circles, if we can't tell our stories there, then it feels like we're just talking to each other sometimes. And the people who really do need to hear from us and need to hear
that, you know, we were not what is being painted as being Islam or being Muslims. We are a different story than what the story that they think. If we can't get that message across, then, you know, Sena phobia is going to persist
So that would be, you know, my message to any non Muslims help us, you know, get our message across and help us access other audiences who wouldn't normally hear from us.
Shahid has alluded to it, but committing to being into a cyst start by examining your own prejudice. And I and I looked quickly at the chat. And some of the audience has suggested the Harvard anti bias questionnaire where you get to answer a question really, honestly, between you and yourself and your computer, and see what are the biases that you have and reflect on them. So you don't become a perpetrator of these aggression, and not be complicit by your silence, because that interaction does not include you.
Even and be open to, you know, to having this conversation with people around you, if you to see if you've ever kind of done things that are insensitive or hurting that it's aesthetically, look, we can all improve ourselves. And very, very funny anecdote.
Very funny, an anecdote that I have with someone who's super also, like in mental health and very, very involved, she were talking about, and he managed to that I I liked the CMM he's, he's such he's so moderate. And because I knew that she was open minded, and really in touch with the stuff I said, you know, when you say, this is such a moderate Muslim, is like, if you say, he is so different than other than all the other imams. So it's like, there's exception, or it's like saying, another pose, I'm stereotype on another group to say, for example, black father who are known to be more involved than any other fathers. And he said, Oh, he's he, he's black, but he's involved with his family, but
he's present. So you're alluding that the rest isn't or that the norm is to not be moderate. So these are things that maybe we don't realize, being conscious of them and reflect and diamond being open to this.
To this conversation, even though uncomfortable can help us become better partners, Muslim or non Muslim. And if you are in mental health, if you are in the system, to to break down systemic barriers, it should not be on the burden should not be on minorities only it has to be from people in the system, be part of inclusion committees, be part of culturally sensitive training, if you're in health care, anti racism, anti bias training, and and if they don't happen in your corporation, make sure that it is is part of your recruitment, that is part of, of of, of what she do to break down barriers and give opportunities for people to shine.
Just tackle a crisis, just one.
And while you were talking about it, there was another question more so for you, I guess, do you have a resource explaining identity enhancing strategy?
Very good question.
I'd have to look it up.
But in general, when we talk about identity enhancing strategies is what we were talking about what a penis does, which is exploring your identity and answering the South because these tropes about violent Islam, and and submissive Muslim woman we have when when I sometimes give religious classes to teenagers, they have the same questions. Is it true that
men were in the marriage, the men is the one who has the authority? Or is it true that these and this and this, and your queen has article on like, the five myths around woman and Islam? And to answer all these doubts? So I think rather than then giving you identity building resources, just to kind of look out of the doubt or the question or understand that makes you uncomfortable, that then you that you skip over, and you don't want to talk about it and you avoid debate. And if your child or your brother come ask you say I don't know, let's not talk about this. These are debates that are not useful, but you are just kind of closing your eyes on something that already exists in the heart
of people and and kind of brew. So to get educated i think is super important. And to look, I think yocan Institute is a great place to start other and look like identity enhancing is to like, not hide, you know, like, I'm taking a break, I'm going to pray. I'm not changing your name. I often say
if people learn to say Einstein name, they can say doctor on the stoop. And so I say you're allowed to butcher it. But But you, you you, you call me like you will call any other doctor, for example, in my practice, or a little step stuff to kind of assert yourself even though it's very uncomfortable asserting ourselves, I think asserting us
being respectful but being also kind of not hiding
is the first step and learning more about our own doubt, responding to our own doubts.
And just took a final questions do Muslims generally face barriers to accessing mental health or counseling services are available to them, whether it's through their Masjid or through, you know, professional medical professionals, is that an issue that you know, it's very prominent within the community.
Maybe I'll go for experimental the access and then maybe the spiritual counseling a leaf to to one of the Imams, but
there is many barriers to to mental health in general, mental health is stigmatized, even more in minority group and even more, because if you go to a non Muslim identifying therapist, as someone who's not culturally sensitive, there is a very big power dynamic, that is felt and and some interactions from outside can be reproduced.
So it can you can feel very vulnerable to someone that you don't know you have to divulge everything, or you don't have to use you should to build the therapeutic relationship to be able to improve and get better. There's a lot of work going on around that. Hadid Institute is one that I can name was developing and family based psychotherapy for people who want to have a spiritual approach that wants to integrate their spiritual life into their treatment. So that is one that I can talk about more and have a lot of resources on their website do a lot of training. And in general, in a lot of universities, and a lot of programs more and more, we're doing more cultural
sensitive training. So if you ever you go see a non Muslim identifying psychiatrist because not everyone is going to be able to see the mental health worker from there same
cultural and identity and sometimes you don't want to because you're afraid that communities are small and people talk, although it's always confidential, but it's it's a real fear that exists in people.
So So
did you culturally sensitive training is very important in all programs. And, and, and for spiritual counseling that includes mental health. I'll leave it for
now.
Does that qualify? Dr. mutulu? Thank you so much. I'm actually going to call out Muslim for right now, inshallah. So firstly, Dr. Mustapha, for being part of the event, and sharing your deep thoughts and your experiences in everything that you see. But most of what I want to address with you over here is related to this concept of how Muslims are treated differently. So can you perhaps share some of the stories or some of the incidents of Muslims being discriminated at schools or being discriminated at workplaces? And then what is nccm? his approach to dealing with those things? And I think that'll tie in very well in terms of the discrimination that Muslims feel in accessing
mental health services as well. So does that what I heard was the fact I'll let you take over and show.
I appreciate the color shape of you to
say that, first, actually, maybe it'll be helpful for me to actually address the question of mental health services.
So one of the things that I think folks don't realize is,
when quite often when we get,
you know, and I think obviously, you've folks when when, when when you hear about a violence attack that takes place, usually nccm will be on site pretty quickly afterwards, to support the victims to find out what's going on, right legal assistance, things like that. And one of the big gap areas that we continue to see is being able to provide emergency mental health services, because oftentimes what happens when people go through these things, it's incredibly traumatic. And without giving any particulars, I can tell you that in one reason, instance that happened, you know, we I heard from one of the survivors, that, you know, they're they would just wake up screaming in the
middle of the night for like days on end. And they weren't able to effectively find
those within our community very easily who could help address their kinds of questions or concerns. And so one of the things that we've been doing, and we definitely will appreciate your support and your help on is building out more supports for victims. And so I can definitely tell you that that's an ongoing kind of thing that we're working on.
In terms of addressing individual concerns, whether whether it's employment, whether it's with police, whether it's with other stakeholders, we at NC Sam are always there to take your call. And I can tell you that we get a wide range of concerns
Today, we got a concern about somebody who's worried about literally just today, a concern about losing his job, because he wasn't, you know, not shaving his beard. You know, these are concerns that are kind of constantly flagged and raised to us. And we're always there to help answer and to support. And generally, the person you'll end up talking to, is somebody who's our Director of legal affairs. To give you perspective, Sydney has taken on some of the biggest cases, in terms of Islamophobia in Canada, right now in North America, that includes a lawsuit with rebel media, that includes a lawsuit with the People's Party of Canada, that includes a lawsuit with the Canada, you
know, the cbsa
over critical areas, and so these are taking on some of the biggest kinds of institutions to advocate for your rights. And that's,
you know, extra to the bill 21 stuff that's happening on the side. I mean, we all know, we were just at the Supreme Court of Canada, on issues relating to the rights of
members and associations, and clarifying out the law around that. And so maybe I'll turn it over to some you had to be a dress kind of that that question is a little bit more thorough fashion, and what people can expect if they, if you call nccm, looking for help relating to song phobia?
Me, I'll just add a little bit more just briefly, to what I just laid out. But we do get a wide range of cases that come in, whether it's people who are reporting it on our website that comes to us directly as well, or people getting phone calls into our department. So we deal with a lot of cases, whether it's discrimination, when people are traveling, discrimination, when people are shopping,
whether it's retailers or stores.
I know that their workplace, I mean, it's like Islamophobia, discrimination, profiling, those are some of the situations that take place in a lot of these common areas of your workplace, you know, when you're traveling at airports, so we get a lot of a wide range of cases, and a lot of them also involve national security cases. And so on the law like we've been able to, we're at the forefront of providing a lot of these legal support services, whether it's legal advice, or just further information or guidance to a lot of clients who require some information as to what are their rights, what are the next steps that they can take to enforce their rights? A lot of individuals who
call them don't necessarily know, they know that they've experienced something that that's wrong, that shouldn't have happened, but they don't know what are their next steps? Who should return to? Where should we go? To get more information? What's the timeline? For example, when you have a discrimination claim, how much time do you have before you can make a complaint. And these are just some information that we do try to provide to your clients as soon as possible so that they can take the steps necessary to enforce their rights as well.
But we are we're always here to support members of our community. You know what, whether it's a hate crime or discrimination claim, we're here to assist in any way that we can tell.
Yes, maybe I just wanted to add that in Quebec, there is a mental health team that is non sectorized that take care of social polarization
problems. So if you are a victim of discrimination, or racism, and you need mental health services, or if you are kind of a few are worried about
being kind of into violent extremist ideas, be an alt right or whatever, and need mental health support. It's called a key pinicola is SEO and they have a phone number that I'll share and I've worked with them. So I do know that they I wouldn't counsel on a on a team that I don't have firsthand, so I have worked with them. And, and their number is 514-267-3979. It's a clinic polarization. So that is one that's Quebec only
exactly like a doctor. So then before you mute was Dr. alfian. Malik's website. I can't remember the website's name right now. It's the Muslim mental health.ca, I believe.
All right, excellent.
So Muslim mental health.ca also has resources available on different types of mental health support that are available to the Muslim community. They've done a pretty decent job in mapping the different types of psychological services across Canada that are available, so anyone from the Muslim community that is looking for mental health support. Along with the center there is the Muslim mental health.ca website as well. So you can access that over there.
Well,
so I semia before you muted I was gonna say were there any more questions that needed to be asked?
No, I think that's that's it for questions
in sha Allah so we still have 10 minutes to go, we can wrap up early and give everyone a break or if anyone else has any concluding comments that they'd like to make you can do so now inshallah
I just want to take the moment inshallah to thank everyone, especially chef innovate for spearheading this event, and is really his brainchild, Dr. Sent them for all of her amazing insights, and especially most stuff, and some you have for all the amazing work that they do. I mean, it's seems like every other week, somebody will message me with a problem. And I'll be like, go talk to nccam go talk to nccam. So the work that they do a lot of is behind the scenes, and a lot of it isn't seen by the community. And yet so much of it is so important for our community. And so we do well as a community within TCM as well. And that's why it's incredibly important for us to
support people like what
they're doing. So just
to add it to the scales of the of your good deeds on the Day of Judgment. I mean,
like we're all in it together in chama mail, this phone call raises all in a better place. I mean,
maybe all inshallah, and our children and grandchildren in the next generations inshallah be live in a world that's free of a song phobia, where they where they can live with justice, and with for all for all.
I mean, is that well, first of all, before I let you meet yourself, can you just do a quick brief on the event that you guys are doing on the 29th? And what we can expect in Sharma? Sure. So on the 29th in sha Allah there, were inviting and asking everyone to attend CCI cues, national zoom digital, you can drop in for a little bit. If you just go to Facebook and you type in CCI IQ, national vigil, you'll be able to find there the the official digital of the Quebec City Masjid. In the evening, we're going to be having a session with Islamic Relief and nccm
dedicated towards supporting the question you're going to be hearing from all the major Canadian political leaders, I can announce today that you meet Singh, for example, will be attending and speaking. And I'm sure you'll be hearing about some more in the next few days, inshallah. And you'll also inshallah, throughout the rest of the evening, be hearing from some of our luminaries as to why we need to be supporting, and what we need to be thinking about four years on from the convexity machines attack. I also, of course, encourage you all to work to support the green square campaign, which is again supporting
those who went through and continue to go through the impacts of the violence attack at the masjid and also, you know, if you're, if you want to be involved in some of the many attempts to prevent such an attack from occurring, there's a lot of folks that are working on things, including nccn. But there's many, many other folks, I encourage you to do some research to look into what's going on. There's a lot of things that we need your help for, to make sure that we dismantle these white supremacist groups. And you know, you can check out our Facebook and learn more about what you can do to be part of the solution.
Is that correct? Thank you so much.
So I guess we'll conclude on that note, I too would like to thank all my esteemed colleagues and and panelists design and market analysts panels and make it heavy on your skill of good deeds. To all of the attendees. Thank you so much for attending and sharing your time with us today, we pray that it was of benefit and we would love to hear your feedback. All of us I believe are on some sort of social media platform. So please do reach out to us with any feedback that you have. Or you can just send it directly to your pin anything afforded to us as well. A big Maka antiochene as well for hosting the event and facilitating the marketing and all that.
You know, as we approach January 29, it is always difficult to think about what happened. But I believe events like this
are assigned and inshallah whatever happened, did not go in vain. As long as we continue to dialogue and discuss and further this discussion against Islamophobia and countering it.
We can hope that with a less panel with others help that we are making the world a safer place for our children and grandchildren and all humans to come in late either. And last but not least, I want to give a special shout out to send me her. You know, I felt so embarrassed that he put you as the emcee because you're so qualified martial athletic allowed to speak on a wide array of subjects and you do so much as well. So a special shout out and dessert
Look out to you as well for for emceeing the event. Thank you so much. We will conclude with that satanic alarm will become Nick shadow and I like the end. Estelle Furukawa too late. Salam alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh