singers-from-ontario

"I would never preach vegetarianism. It’s such a personal choice. It’s got to suit you, and be right for you: emotionally, spiritually and physically. If it’s working for you, that’s really great. … I definitely think there are some benefits. I know a lot of people that have had cancer, for example, and they’ll make a point of telling me, ‘The first thing my doctor told me to do was stop eating meat during this process.’ I think it’s interesting a doctor would suggest a vegetarian diet when you’re already sick. … I stick to a mixture of real raw, whole-food items every day. I make sure I’m eating greens every day, and nuts, and food that’s not processed. I do that every day."

"Race the roaring Fraser to the sea."

"Oh, the year was seventeen seventy-eight (how I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!)"

"To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men To find there but the road back home again."

"And you to whom adversity has dealt the final blow With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go"

"God damn them all! I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold we'd fire no guns -- shed no tears! Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier The last of Barrett's Privateers."

"Rise again Rise again That her name not be lost to the knowledge of men."

"No matter what you've lost Be it a home, a love, a friend Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again."

"Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage And make a northwest passage to the sea."

"Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones."

"We all want a simple song. We all want to get along. We all want to just belong. We all want to know right from wrong. We all want to love and be loved strong."

"The past we’ve got we must forget. Future hasn’t happened yet. Carry this moment in a song. Insha Allah, it won’t be long."

"Every picture you give me I save, and every colour you use is so true to you. Every minute we spend I engrave, and every memory rethought is so new. There is trust that we must recognize. There is so much that we must learn to see and be, if we could only open our minds. Just grow with God and please be patient with me, and I will give you my life."

"We all want to fit into a culture, a community; we want to find a home, security, freedom of faith and lifestyle but these days all those things are threatened. We don’t know whether the "freedom" in our western democracies means "free of domination" or "free to dominate". Muslim youth are confused and searching for answers. Some are looking towards rigid traditionalism, others to more secular approaches. Many of us are left wondering what is right and what is wrong."

"When it comes to "Islam" — I look at the word as the verbal noun it is: an action word. I see Islam as something someone does, not something someone "belongs to". I believe that "religion", as the world commonly knows it today, is a divisive factor in community. When I was about 15 years old, I renounced a belief in the importance of "religion", seeking rather to find answers to life's questions. My spiritual quest has always been to bring me closer to my purpose in life, a better relationship with the force that brought me into existence, and how to relate to fellow human beings. When I was 17, I started reading scriptures from around the world and the more I read the more commonality I saw between them all. When I discovered the Qur'an at the age of 20, it seemed to be the most organic in its message. I got out of "religion" and got into life. To this day, I renounce a trust in the institutions of "religion"."

"Time seems cold, each day we grey away. Believe the lines that we’ve been told, 'Lose our way lose yesterday’, they say, but who are they? Who are they anyway? They didn’t hear us play at eight years old."

"Words can never really help you say, what you want them to anyway. And words can never really help you see, what you really want to be."

"But if we hide ourselves away, afraid to grow and learn, we might wake up in the flames of the ignorance that burns and we’ll never be much more than only casualties of war in a struggle we can’t win if we have no faith to begin. We’ve got to tip the lid and let some sunlight in."

"Hope as rich and green as the trees of an oasis."

"No more starry eyes from behind these dusty spectacles. I’ll wipe them and follow my own shadow for a change."

"We’ve digitized the revelations — does our rehearsed recitation go any deeper than our throats? Our calls to prayer they seem to rise up to the skies, conferences and lectures, seminars for you and I. The words that blow away with the nasheed that make us cry, yet why are the drums so silent?"

"Standing in the market square, so alive but void of life, We work and we sweat and we struggle through each day. As our efforts scar our hands, this world stains us with demands. It’s hard to see life’s humour in the business games we play. As we gnaw our nails with stress, our fists and hearts pound so carelessly. With every effort forward, how much more can we digress?"

"We spend so much time defending the Qur’an from attacks that it’s sexist, we rant and rave about how Islam gave rights to women over 1400 years ago, but our sisters are still not in position of leadership within our community. Our sisters are still praying next to the shoe-racks while the men have plush carpets beneath their lazy foreheads and our public women’s shelters are full of Muslim women fleeing from abusive husbands and dead-beat dads. The sad reality is that our community does display sexist attitudes to women. Writing a song about Hijab seemed pretty shallow to me in light of the other issues surrounding women that we Muslims are too self-righteous to face. … I began to see that some Muslim women look down on others for not covering, or that many Muslim men judge sisters who wear hijab differently from those who don’t. A sister shows up at the mosque one day without hijab and she is treated rudely; she shows up the next day with hijab and she is treated like a queen. Such a scenario is a blatant treatment of the woman as an object, no different than the judgements we see made in secular society of women’s appearances. In the end, it is not about the piece of cloth. It is about the relationship with God, and I know I don’t want anybody judging me so I don’t think it is right for us to judge each other."

"I was never so much "interested in Islam", so much as I was interested in trying to find out about God; I wanted to discover my purpose in life and a way to better the world I share with others."

"It was my agenda — value our faith, value our opportunity to grow and better ourselves as believers and citizens of the world. Singing to and for myself and Muslims, I can be more explicate in my lyrics, drawing directly from Islamic sources. Some of my music is naturally a little bit more sensitive to the opinions and feelings of a broader audience — still Islamic in its essence, but more "holistic" and "organic" than dogmatic."

"I only feel close to you when I‘m under open sky, I only feel guided when I’m free to question why."

"I included songs which were aimed at making listeners think a little more deeply about faith in general. People of The Boxes for example, is not just a fable with implied reference to Jews and Christians, but it also points out that we who call ourselves "Muslims" are also living in a box sometimes. I wanted to help myself and the listeners realise our own faults too — to stop being so judgmental of others and to get ourselves out of the dogmatic boxes we have trapped ourselves in."

"Start small, put down the book you’re reading and sit with your grandmother to learn her language and find out about her life’s struggles and her history, before she passes on and your history is lost; put down the TV remote control and stop letting pop culture define who you are and go for a walk through your hometown’s historical landmarks. Find your identity by actually looking for the things in life that appeal to you or stir emotion in you. If you just let your government, your local imam, even your local pop singer or nasheed singer, define what you should be, you will never be more than that. Look in the mirror and ask yourself, ‘Who do I WANT to be?’ Start there."

"There is a tendency in the Muslim community to play the victim and the target of media and political conspiracies. Whilst I don’t dispute the media is unfair in its portrayal of Muslims, and that our governments have hidden agendas to protect their financial interests in lands where populations are primarily Muslim, I think we should take up the example of the Prophet and be more "in control" of our reactions and our opportunities to make dawa through personally instigating positive change in our local communities. We must reach out to our neighbours not with an agenda of conversion, but in simple acts of sincere love. We must stop blaming everybody else for our struggles and hardships and start to take action in our own lives through sincere efforts to improve who we are as individuals."

"I feel for, and identify with, individuals on their spiritual journeys — whether those journeys are hard or smooth. That is why I write about the young man who parties all night and finds it hard to get along with his parents; I sing about the Muslim girl murdered by her father and step mother; I write about the death of a close relative and the struggle of dealing with that parting; I write about conflict within marriage; difficulties being a good parent; religious hypocrisy; consumerism; sexual abuse; religious narrow-mindedness; these are all struggles that are very real within our community. Even if I have not felt these struggles first hand, seeing others around me experience such tests does effect me… the social repercussions of these struggles effect us all one way or another."

"Truth as clear and blue as the sky we walk under. Love as bright and loud as the lightning and thunder. Peace as pure and white as the moon, so full of wonder. So many different colours of Islam!"

"The world is not a box, there’s no lid, no doors, no cardboard flaps or locks, and everything in nature from the clouds to the rocks is a piece of the puzzle of the purpose of mankind, it's a piece of the peace that we’ll find."

"My programme, The Art of Creative Expression, empowers young people with tools to express themselves. We teach photography, art and drama, but it's not just the medium that's important, it's about what you are trying to say."

"It has nothing to do with age, it's not our languages, religion, gender, coulour of our skin; It’s a soul within a well, that echoes deep beneath the ego’s shell. True life can’t ever start, until we offer up our heart."

"Build me a tomb for when I die, build it 50,000 feet into the sky... Build me a boat I want to discover America, build me a boat to take me to the edge of the seven seas, build me a boat and you can sail along with me, we’ll spread our money, power, religion and disease. ...Who are they to say that we own nothing and our lives have gone astray?"

"Pictures of politicians preen across our TV screens, pretensions plaques and posters fill our minds and magazines. Promises a burning match, igniting dreams of straw…"

"For the record: Though our professional circles did cross-over slightly... I never had the honour or pleasure of meeting Michael Jackson personally, nor did we ever correspond on matters of our professions, personal lives or faiths. … My approach to faith does not include concepts of "conversion/reversion" or "propagation", so the very idea that I would have even tried to "convert" Mr. Jackson (or anyone else for that matter) to my spiritual perspective, is silly."

"I believe the spiritual journey that each of us takes on is a personal one, and I feel religion is a delicate road to be on. I don’t like to belong to one religious community as I don’t want people to feel excluded from asking for my help or learning with me. It’s all about bringing people together to celebrate their various interpretations of scripture. I am a Muslim and I worship in mosques when I am in Pakistan. I also worship in Unitarian churches when I’m in the US. Such spiritual freedom is very important to me."

"We have dealt with all these idealists in the past, I’m sure we’ll find a way to deal with them today... Rid our world of all these fanatics one by one, won’t let not prophet lover ruin my fun. We’ll string ‘em up and shoot ‘em down."

"Eating education is like eating Christmas pudding: Too much can make your stomach sore, too much can spoil your whole Christmas. Learning from a man who learned all he learned from another, can lead you to a safe place, but destroy your sense of wonder. Trapped inside a book, locked inside a lecture, when do you find the time to love and spend your days in forests? And when ideals are fleeting — tell me then who do you turn to? They prove to you that God is dead, but to them you’re just a number."

"You could call me antisocial, I’ve called myself that sometimes too, but I just prefer to be alone, and that’s nothing against you."

"Truth is buried, deep inside of men, sweep away each day."

"Allah made us all a different shade and colour. Nations and tribes recognize one another! ’Cause every single person is your sister and brother."

"Put all our pride away, always find a gentle word to say, you know we shouldn’t be full of ourselves when we should be full of humility."

"If we can just be brave enough to be each others mirror, we may finally recognize the face of conscious that we fear."

"If we can take the time to mute the noise we’ve build around ourselves the rhythm of the heartbeats and the purpose may be clear."

"Watch the grown ups all twirling with the clock throughout the day. Watch them spinning through the hours while the time hands tick away. They talk and grip the world, as they would catch a falling knife. Reality deceives them ’neath amusing games of life."

"What I read in the Qur’an, and what I learned from the words of Muhammad, Jesus and others really struck a chord with me, so I chose to implement the wisdom I found. I don’t feel as though I "changed" to any new "religion", rather, I just grew as an individual: I matured spiritually. … I believe the proverbial "search" doesn’t end until we die."

"Can you hear the rhythm of all/Allah's creation? The rhythm of the clapping of the thunder and the rain? Can you see the rhythm of all creation? The lightning and the leaves and the seasons as they change?"

"Teachers and pop icons, empty drums beat loudest noise. We swap their quotes and CDs like children trading toys. Follow along, bite the barbed hook deep in our jaw..."