muslims-from-canada

"Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses or ifs or buts."

"Writing a book is so strange. You start off in one spot and end up in another. But I think when I first set out to write the book, there was a certain element of trying to right historical wrongs I saw as a voracious reader and representation of immigrants and children of immigrants…"

"… I started writing it in 2010 and we weren’t as interested in stories about diversity back then. People told me I should set it in the United States, but I said no, it’s a second-generation Canadian story. It’s a unique and specific story. I wrote it anyway because it interested me. I thought, “Maybe I’ll be amusing myself at the very least.”"

"…most stories about Muslims contain negative stereotypes that reinforce xenophobic, one-sided narratives that can cause real harm to vulnerable populations. I hope that more stories about Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists, etc., set in the West, will help readers understand immigrant communities better, but most importantly will also allow those immigrant communities to see themselves as worthy of being featured in all types of stories, not just highly politicized ones…"

"As a writer, my primary responsibility to readers is to write a story that is entertaining, and authentic. I wanted to write about characters who felt true to life, while also providing a way for readers to laugh at the foibles of others. Some of my characters are foolish, some are wise and kind, others are shallow and misguided. That’s how regular people behave too, and in fact we all cycle between many different ways of being…"

"We have a responsibility – as an online community, as Canadians and as leaders – to stamp out cyberviolence. That’s why the Department for Women and Gender Equality is working with partners across the country to prevent and eliminate cyberviolence. So what exactly is cyberviolence? We often see a pushback, a denial of its legitimacy – people see cyber violence as a made-up thing. But research and experience show it’s real – and so are its impacts. Cyberviolence is the use of social media, cell phones and other electronic devices to do harm. It is often repetitive. It is often anonymous. And it has serious and dire consequences. Ready for a few examples? Looking at the Twitter feeds of women in leadership, I came across a trove of online violence and hate."

"Want to know what the Liberals have in mind as they push to restrict free speech on social media? Minister Maryam Monsef offers my tweet about being blocked by Rempel as an example of “online violence and hate” that needs to be “stamped out.”"

"If life is a test, where's your patience? How can you tell us that you were not blessed?"

"There was a house made out of sticks, there was a city, made out of bricks, I was amazed at what I saw, all I could say was Subhanallah!"

"But when it rains, it rains on all our houses, we all get cold when it snows. When a storm rolls in, huddled up against our windows, we all feel the fear when a strong wind blows, While on this earth, we’re all of equal worth."

"Dear God I've heard your name from teachers, family and friends, you made the universe and so will live on when it ends. Everyone I know admits they’ve never seen your face, they’re not sure where you live and have no map to the place."

"There’s always work that must be done...Life’s so simple when we simply work to make it fun."

"We love to live a simple life...we simply love the life we live though some would say its hard."

"Fences and forts with walls and flags, caw caw — they’re so funny."

"The foolish big boys who fight with their toys are so sadly silly."

"Someday we’ll realize, perhaps much to our surprise, the keys to free a smile have been with us all the while: look for good, and spread that good around."

"I saw a dream, Earth safe and green. No hunger no war, water so clean. I’ll work for the world that I saw, set my mind and say insha Allah."

"A busy buzzing bee is a lot like me, it works and it lives in community."

"Allah gave the Qur’an to a very special man, who passed it on to us, for the rest of all our days."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"You’ve built me a cabin but I want more, and more and more, now build me an office tower with an automatic door. Build me a fence that I can wrap around my state. If anyone tries to break through, I pity his fate."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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!"

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"I sent an email to my loved one, just the other day, it’s sad communication has evolved this way. We use so many words but have so little to relay, as angels scribble down every letter that we say. All the viral attachments sent and passionate insults we vent, it’s easy to be arrogant behind user passwords we invent. But on the day the scrolls are laid, with every word and deed displayed, when we read our accounts, I know, for one, I’ll be afraid."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."