Where is Christ in the modern Christmas?

Growing up as a Muslim in Canada, I was fascinated by the enormous amount of attention given to ensuring the Christmas spirit is in the air at this time of year.

But what I saw and heard was largely confined to the materialistic aspects of Christmas.

It seemed as if Christmas had been deprived of its own fundamental identity – namely Christ.

At a world-religions conference that took place in Montreal recently, I was asked how Muslims view Jesus. The questioner was amazed to learn that Muslims believe in the life and teachings of Jesus.

In the Quran, God tells the believers: “Say: We have believed in God and what has been revealed to us and what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants and what was given to Moses and Jesus and what was given to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we submit to Him.”

In another verse, God tells Mary: “O Mary, indeed God gives you good tidings of a word from Him, whose name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary – distinguished in this world and the Hereafter and among those brought near to God.”

Muslims view Jesus as an honourable prophet who brought guidance and faith to his people.

The names Jesus and Christ are mentioned in the Quran in dozens of verses. The teachings of Jesus and the interaction with his disciples are spoken of.

Muslims believe in the miracles of Jesus, including resurrection of the dead and healing the blind.

Muslims have much to talk about and to celebrate when it comes to Christ.

Although many Canadians have made a clear distinction between church and state and have de-emphasized the importance of Jesus, Christmas is still an important time of year – even in highly secular Quebec.

But are people being deprived of an understanding of the real meaning of Christmas by those secular values?

An Ottawa-area school recently cancelled its annual Christmas concert and offered a “holiday-themed craft night” instead. The justification was that non-Christians students, who were in the minority at the school, would not attend the Christmas concert, and the school had to be accommodating to all students.

Although I applaud the desire to be inclusive, I don’t think the cancellation was appropriate. A more meaningful approach, in my view, would be to hold a multi-faith concert or presentation that would promote understanding of and respect for other people’s faiths.

Children from different backgrounds and religions could share their personal experiences from their own religious celebrations, and shed light on what those celebrations represent.

Christmas is an opportunity for us to learn about the noble teachings of Christ and to share our ideas on how those teachings and values can benefit society.

AYMAN OWEIDA is a doctoral student in the department of experimental medicine at McGill University.

Canadian Muslim investors seek Halal retirement funds

With nearly a million Muslims in Canada, comprising nearly three per cent of the country’s population, there has been an emphasis over the last decade in investment products that adhere to the strict dictates of Shariah law.

So-called Shariah-compliant investments have been growing in popularity, due in part to investor interest in working with the Middle East as oil prices continue to rise.

The key elements of Islamic investing are the avoidance of interest, or Riba, and that investment products have no ties to:

Interesting-charging companies, including banks.

Pork producers.

Casinos.

Alcohol producers.

Tobacco companies.

Companies that produce media such as gossip columns or pornography.

Companies that deal with firearms or any sort of ammunition.

Mining, technology common sectors

The deadline for Registered Retirement Savings Plan contributions that can be claimed for the 2011 tax return year is midnight Wednesday night.

As a devout Muslim, Mohammad Khalid, a retired economist living in Oakville, Ont., says Muslims must be careful about their investments, such as securities and equities.

Khalid, who manages his own portfolio, investing in sectors such as mining, forestry and technology, and is helping his older children save for their retirement, says unless Muslim investors are careful about where their money is going, they could end up in non-compliant products.

“The way I actually look at Shariah-compliant products is mainly as a subset of ethical, or socially responsible investing [such as avoiding the adult entertainment industry or any company that may negatively impact the environment],” he told CBC economics correspondent Mike Hornbrook.

“The whole market is essentially available, excluding some of the major ones [such as insurance companies and banks]. …There are so many different companies which which will keep giving you dividends year after year.”

Rehan Huda, a director with Amana Canada Holdings, a niche financial firm that sells Shariah-compliant investment funds, says Islam prohibits explicit loan contracts where you just lend someone money and they pay it back with interest, so that means investing in bank or insurance company stock, or in bonds of any sort that generate interest, is not allowed.

Huda’s Shariah-compliant funds are focused on mining, forestry and technology.

“We’ve assisted in getting the Shariah-compliant certification for a couple of the mutual funds that are in Canada right now,” he says. “There’s one fund – a bullion fund – that’s a fairly large fund that has gold, silver, platinum stored here, and it’s a purely Shariah-compliant fund.

“Since we’re heavily in resource and technology-weighted [funds] … when those do well, the Shariah funds generally do well.”

TSX has Shariah stock index

Huda says that as Muslims make up a growing proportion of Canada’s population, the demand for Shariah-compliant investments will only grow.

“An inordinate amount of cash is found among Muslim investors that I know … and they are waiting for Shariah-compliant products,” he says.

“In the future, there’s going to be a lot more products because the population is increasing here.”

A testament to the growing interest in Shariah-compliant investing is Standard & Poor’s introduction of its Shariah stock index (S&P/TSX 60 Shariah Index) into the Canadian market in 2009. The index recategorizes equities on the S&P/TSX 60 and excludes all equities that do not comply with Islamic law, which is based on the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an.

While sometimes there’s the impression that there are few strong Shariah-compliant investment products, Khalid says there are many “wonderful companies” that can help investors reap big dividends, including technology companies.

“Absolutely nothing is holding them back,” he says. “If they don’t [invest], obviously they’re losing something big time. You can reduce your taxes big time.”

First Muslim mayor of large Canadian city sworn in

Naheed Kurban Nenshi is the first mayor of the Islamic faith in a large Canadian city.

Calgary’s new mayor told a crowd of adoring hundreds Monday that the new city council will try to tap the city’s new-found civic passion and not fail residents.

As he received claps, hoots and hollers normally reserved for rock stars, Naheed Kurban Nenshi told a City Hall atrium full of supporters: “We cannot let you down.”

After a winning campaign of promises to build an airport tunnel and a southeast LRT, to improve snow removal and shred bureaucratic red tape, he offered Calgarians a further pledge:

“This council will be more open,” he said, the mayor’s chain around his neck and the city’s 14 alderman at his side.

“We’ll make it easier for you to engage in our conversation. We’ll better understand your needs and your priorities and we’ll act on them.

“We’ll listen. We’ll get beyond division and individualism to work together for the best interests of all Calgarians.”

He marvelled at the election’s high voter turnout and challenged Calgarians to keep doing their part.

“Tell us when we’re devolving into the politics as usual. Tell us when our priorities are not your priorities,” he said, exhorting people to join community associations and other groups.

His speech from City Hall’s atrium staircase followed an emotional swearing-in ceremony, led by his elder sister Shaheen Nenshi Nathoo.

“As immigrants my parents have faced many challenges, many struggles, and had many difficulties,” she said, the emotional tremble in her matching the tears in many spectators’ eyes.

“But today I’m sure they will tell you it was worth every single one of them.”

Canada’s first big-city Muslim mayor used buzz around his religion as a platform to promote interfaith harmony.

His ceremony featured welcomes from Ismaili leader Mohamud Zaver, Rabbi Howard Voss-Altman and fellow mayoral candidate Wayne Stewart, an ordained Christian minister.

Canadian Muslim sitcom that became a global success comes to an end

The concept was radical in its non-radicalness: a television series about Muslims who were neither extremist nor oppressed.

Five years ago this January, the writer Zarqa Nawaz created something no one had seen before: a sitcom about ordinary Muslims living alongside non-Muslims in North America. They laughed. They cried. They got interrogated at airports.

As Little Mosque on the Prairie enters its sixth and final season today, the series remains the only one of its kind. Canadian in origin, it has gone on to be broadcast in more than 50 countries worldwide, from France to Finland to francophone Africa. It came to the UAE in 2008. Along the way, the show has won countless awards in Canada and abroad for its fresh portrayal of multiculturalism.

“It accomplished more than I ever thought it ever would – no one believed it could last six seasons,” Nawaz says. “A show about Muslims in the middle of the prairies was not what anyone was going to consider a ratings hit.”

The actress Sitara Hewitt, who plays Dr Rayyan Hamoudi, recalls the show had a humble start.

“We shot it in a little studio – it didn’t have a huge budget at the beginning. It was a bit of a pipe dream.”

Then, after the first episode was broadcast, Hewitt got a text message telling her more than two million viewers had tuned in that night. She was shocked.

The reviews were mixed – Little Mosque was hailed as groundbreaking, but dismissed as insipid. Viewership fell by more than a quarter. Nevertheless, the show was undeniably unique. Awards were rolled out, and new fans rolled in – including from the US, where the show wasn’t screened, but was accessed online.

It’s been a humbling experience, says the actor Zaib Shaikh, who plays the town imam, Amaar Rashid. When he took the role, his focus was on making a funny, believable show about diversity. The fact that it’s turned into something much bigger reminds him of another groundbreaking series: The Cosby Show.

“Bill Cosby wasn’t trying to make a show that showed African-Americans were normal,” Shaikh says. “He was trying to show African-Americans as themselves. As soon as you show a culture that’s been ignored or feared as itself, chances are you’re humanising it.”

The evidence of how badly Little Mosque on the Prairie was needed is in the audience’s reception, Hewitt says.

“The best pieces of fan mail are the ones from women saying, thank you so much for finally portraying someone like me on TV in a favourable light,” she says. “One of the Muslim girls called Rayyan the Muslim Carrie Bradshaw.”

An enduring storyline on the show has been the budding romance between Rayyan and Amaar, who wed at the end of season five. It’s been a Ross and Rachel tale – but with chaperoned dates, which have led to complications and hilarity.

The power of comedy, Nawaz says, is that it lets everyone’s guard down. That provides an opportunity for dialogue. Five years on, she still believes entertainment is one of the best ways to tackle the prejudice that is still all too common.

“[The show] is like a drop in an ocean of the anti-Muslim Islamophobia that exists,” she says. “I’m glad to have helped turn that tide, but it’s still a huge tide.”

The show is produced by the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, which has a mandate to reflect the country’s multiculturalism. Nawaz says it wasn’t hard to get the show on air – where she did run into creative differences was with storyline ideas.

Nawaz was originally the only Muslim writer on the show (she fought for a second one to be brought on in a later season), and just as the show’s Muslims and non-Muslims don’t always see eye to eye, neither did the team behind the scenes.

One storyline that never made it to screen was about Amaar’s virginity. Though Nawaz explained it would be normal for an unmarried man to be a virgin in Muslim culture, the network executives disagreed.

“They would say no, it’s not humanly possible,” Nawaz recalls. “It was always this weird resistance I would get, when they were trying to frame things in their perspective. It was hard – and that’s why I say it was a miracle that we got what we got out of the show.”

Right now, the closest television offering to Little Mosque is an American reality series that debuted in November, All-American Muslim. The two shows shared similar journeys. Both raised eyebrows before they were broadcast, as Muslims, non-Muslims, and the media alike questioned their motives. Once they debuted, both shows were found to be high-minded – if too benign to be highly entertaining.

But Little Mosque was never subjected to the right-wing boycott calls that recently besieged advertisers on All-American Muslim. Instead, Little Mosque had advertisers lining up for airtime. Its own controversy was decidedly more Canadian.

In 2010, diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks revealed that American officials in Ottawa had kept an eye on Little Mosque, and didn’t like what they saw. The cable warned Washington of Canadian television’s “negative popular stereotyping” of US border officials. The suspected cause? Canada’s inferiority complex.

The CBC’s decision to bring Little Mosque’s run to an end came as a disappointment to Nawaz, who says there’s still a lot of material in the Muslim community to work with – such as the issue of women and leadership in the mosque.

But Hewitt promises that the show will go out with a bang.

“It’s going to be a very satisfying finale, I think, for fans,” Hewitt says. “Every character that you may have seen and know and love, some big event is going to happen that affects all of their lives, and you’re going to find it very satisfying as a viewer – and a surprise, too.”

Canadian Muslims still have reason to be anxious

Faith’s followers are demonized and stereotyped by politicians and the general public — and terrorized by radicals

  June 4 2010 

 A young Port Moody Muslim is travelling to Europe for the first time and is worried about being racially profiled.

Raised in the relative tolerance of Metro Vancouver, Shaheed Devji has won a European Union-Canada Young Journalist Award that has him flying alone to Belgium, where Muslims are sometimes treated suspiciously in airports and elsewhere.

Devji, a B.C. Institute of Technology broadcast student and SFU soccer play-by-play announcer, wondered if he was just being “paranoid” about whether his laptop was going to be searched.

Unfortunately, he has a right to be anxious.

Racial profiling may be just one of the problems Devji experiences away from Metro Vancouver, which has roughly 70,000 Muslims. Some Muslims in Europe, and especially in the U.S., are being subjected to shocking discrimination, harassment and violence.

In a world on heightened “terrorism alert,” you don’t have to agree with everything to do with Islam — followed by more than one billion diverse people around the planet — to be appalled at the way Muslims are often demonized and stereotyped.

The most recent North American hate speech came last week when well-known Texas talk show host Michael Berry (who has been a fill-in for Fox TV’s nationally syndicated Bill O’Reilly) encouraged his audience to blow up a proposed mosque in New York City.

When one caller supported a new mosque for New York City, Berry responded: “No, you can’t. No, you can’t. And I’ll tell you this — if you do build a mosque, I hope somebody blows it up … I hope the mosque isn’t built, and if it is, I hope it’s blown up, and I mean that.”

This kind of vicious talk, linking all Muslims to bloody terrorism, is almost common on broadcast networks in the U.S., where Muslims make up one per cent of the population.

In the month of May alone, U.S. Muslims were subjected to numerous verbal and physical attacks.

One of the top leaders of the pro-Republican Tea Party movement, talk-show host Mark Williams, last month labelled Islam a “monkey religion.”

As well in May, a pipe bomb exploded in a Florida mosque containing 60 people. It started a fire.

Muslim men were also brutally beaten in both New York and Oregon in suspected hate crimes. And federal authorities last month stepped up their investigation into why a Muslim imam in Detroit was shot 21 times by police — when he was wearing handcuffs.

Although these kinds of shocking incidents don’t occur with the same regularity in Canada, where Muslims make up two per cent of the national population (three per cent in Metro Vancouver), Muslims, unfortunately, have reason to not feel entirely comfortable here.

When I wrote about these U.S. attacks on Muslims on my blog this week, epithets and untruths came flooding in about how Muslims “deserved” such treatment, about how Muslims are “all the same” and about how “Islam is a totalitarian religion” bent on “promoting violence.”

Even though many people wrote to my blog that Muslims have no right to fret about being criticized in Canada — with numerous readers alleging that Christians are more vilified than Muslims in this country — the figures don’t back up the claim.

A recent Angus Reid poll showed only 28 per cent of Canadians “approve of” Islam. In contrast, the poll suggested 72 per cent of Canadians approve of Christianity, while 57 per cent support Buddhism and 53 per cent feel positive about Judaism.

In a world where attacks on Muslims in the West continue to be treated by many as just business as usual, it’s hard for many of us to really appreciate the anxiety that Canadian Muslims, including a young journalist travelling in Europe, still experience on a daily basis.

Canadian Muslims face negative perceptions

CAIRO – The Muslim minority in Canada is still facing negative perceptions a decade after the 9/11, a national survey has found, reflecting a widespread unease towards Muslims in the West.

“Most of these perceptions are built around images that people see globally,” Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS), told theVancouver Sun on Sunday, October 16.

The ACS survey found that Muslims remain the biggest minority group that is seen negatively in Canada.

Only 43 percent of respondents expressed “very positive” or “somewhat positive” perception about Muslims.

The percentage is less than the atheists, who have a very positive perception by 60 percent of respondents, or aboriginals who are positively perceived by 61 percent.

The poll, which included 2,345 people, found that the negative perception of Muslims is much deeper in Quebec, the country’s largest province, than any other Canadian cities.

Only 35 percent of respondents from Quebec had “very positive” or “somewhat positive” perceptions of Muslims.

Quebec has been gripped by heated debates about the wearing of hijab after several Muslim girls were thrown off pitch over wearing the headscarf.

The minority group that got the highest positive perception was the Chinese (75%), followed by Protestants, Blacks and Hispanics/Latin Americans (74%), Catholics (73%), Jews (72%) and francophones (70%).

The category “immigrants” prompted positive responses from 68 percent of those surveyed.

The poll was conducted between Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 and had a margin of error of two percent.

Global View

Jedwab believes that the poll results reflect the widespread unease towards Muslims a decade after the 9/11.

He said the prevailing view a decade ago was that promoting social harmony would depend on overcoming language conflicts or easing general tensions between “whites and all visible minorities.”

Instead, “what’s emerging now is a focus on Muslims vs. non-Muslims,” he said.

“The outlet for people’s prejudice has been displaced by the focus on Muslims.”

Previous polls conducted in Britain and the United States have shown similar negative perceptions of Muslims.

The similar findings in other Western nations “suggests this isn’t a Canadian-specific issue,” said Jedwab, calling for global efforts to help change the anti-Muslim perceptions.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t have programs” and policies in Canada to improve general perceptions of Muslims, he said.

“But the impact of those programs is limited if we don’t have global cooperation.”

Muslims make around 1.9 percent of Canada’s 32.8 million population, and Islam is the number one non-Christian faith in the Roman Catholic country.

A survey has showed the overwhelming majority of Muslims are proud to be Canadian.

How welcome are Muslims in Canada?

Besides the call for revolution, one common slogan in the recent Middle East uprisings is “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is the greatest.” Add to these chants the recent declaration by the Libyan national transition council that Libya will abide by Islamic law, and most recently the victory of the Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia, and you can understand why many in the West are alarmed about the rise of Islam. Is this alarm a legitimate concern, or is it Islamophobia?

In a recent survey by Léger Marketing for the Association of Canadian Studies in Montreal, Canadians were asked how positive they feel about different groups. Muslims received the lowest ranking. The results echoed the findings of a previous survey for the association, this one marking 10 years since 9/11, which found that a majority of Canadians believe that conflicts between Western nations and the Muslim world are “irreconcilable.”

Muslims continue to struggle to integrate safely and openly into Canadian society. Even Canadian-born Muslims find it difficult to be Muslim; growing up as a Muslim here isn’t always easy. Most kids and teenagers are afraid of expressing their Islamic identity, and thus end up living a kind of doublestandard life filled with psychological dilemmas and religious and moral sacrifices.

Whether it’s a girl wearing a hijab, a guy praying during lunch hour at school, or simply having a name such as Osama or Jihad, Muslims are often intimidated about expressing themselves and the values they cherish. I remember as a student having to pray at the bottom end of stairwells during lunch hour, since the school wouldn’t provide space for this purpose for a few minutes, even when all the classrooms were free.

Intolerant attitudes don’t end when one becomes an adult. I was sitting in a public park in Montreal over the summer with my wife and two children, which was enough to attract the attention of a passerby who held a cellphone and pretended to speak to someone about the contamination of the park with Muslims. He spoke loudly enough that we could hear him. Finally, the language became so foul that we left.

In the last few years, Canadians have been exposed to a wide range of negativity about Islam. There was a proposal to bar public services being made available to anyone who wore a niqab in Quebec, bans on girls wearing the hijab while playing sports, and most notably, the passing of a “code of conduct” by the municipality of Hérouxville that prohibited the stoning of women! More recently, Ontario schools were under fire for allowing Muslims to pray at school.

Islamophobia is harmful to all Canadians, irrespective of their faith. Muslims form an integral and constructive part of Canadian society. Take a close look at your daily dealings and see how often they include interactions with Muslims: your visit to the hospital, meeting a professor at university or classmates in school, your ride in a taxicab, your order from the shawarma restaurant, or passing a local mosque as you’re driving.

Islam carries deeply rooted respect, understanding and love for others regardless of their faith or ideology. The Quran clearly states: “There’s no compulsion in religion.” Islam also makes it clear that “the best of people are those who are most beneficial to others.”

The rise of Islamophobia means immediate steps need to be taken to educate people about Islam and Muslims in Canada.

The causes of Islamophobia must be addressed, and clear guidelines formulated to identify and put an end to Islamophobic actions. Only when this happens will the fears and concerns that we manufacture fade away, replaced with the respect and freedom that we hope for.

Céline Cooper is a Montrealer and a PhD candidate in sociology and equity studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Muslim chaplains rehabilitate Canada inmates

TORONTO – Seeking to provide religious and spiritual help for inmates in Canadian prisons, Muslim chaplains are discussing the role of the community in helping those who have lost their voices and rehabilitating the offenders.

“Pay attention to the factors that lead to incarceration,” Imam Michael AbdurRashid Taylor, Executive Director of the Islamic Chaplaincy Services Canada, told OnIslam.net.

“It is important for our community to be proactive rather than reactive.”

A chaplaincy awareness forum was hosted earlier this week at the Islamic Institute of Toronto in Scarborough.

The discussions focused on means of providing religious and spiritual help to inmates and ways of reintegrating the offenders into society.

The chaplains also discussed their work and how the community can provide support to incarcerated prisoners.

“The challenge of all faith communities is to run chaplaincy services given the cuts in government funding,” said Imam Abdul Hai Patel, President of the Ontario Multifaith Council and the Canadian Council of Imam’s Interfaith Relations Director.

The forum was held to offer support for the growing number of chaplaincy services such as those offered by the Ottawa-based Islam Care Center which has been at the forefront of supporting chaplains in Ontario prisons.

The Center provides two permanent Muslim Chaplains to all the federal penitentiaries in Ontario.

Working in partnership with Correctional Service Canada and the Ontario Multifaith Council, the Center has fostered an environment that allows for prisoners to develop themselves while serving their sentences and then to reintegrate back into their community.

The Islam Care Center (ICC) ensures that inmates receive a prayer mat and Qur’an, in a language of their choice, as well as access to other Islamic literature, and monitor that their religious rights are preserved.

ICC also tries to ensure that inmates who are released can re integrate into society in an easy manner.

Community Role

The forum saw a moving testimony by Ahmed Habhab, who was sent to prison after being convicted for drug trafficking.

“I was involved in ecstasy trafficking,” said Habhab.

“I thought I would never get caught.”

Habhab was arrested and served a prison sentence but turned his life around while on bail.

He talked about being ostracized by the community after being released and he had an advice for Muslims.

“Be conscious of the day when you will stand before your Lord.”

A special message was delivered by Jim Karygiannis, the long-standing federal Liberal Member of Parliament for the Scarborough-Agincourt riding.

“You have to get involved and make a difference,” Karygiannis told the audience.

“Do something so that at the end of your life, your life would not be wasted.

“We’ve to accept each other as equals,” he added. “There are four words I want you to remember – respect, accept, celebrate, embrace – [these words] make us part of the human race.”

Reverend Harry Nigh, a Mennonite minister and chaplain, asked the audience to provide assistance to inmates once they leave prison.

“You hold the key to freedom for people coming out of prison,” he said.

“Community volunteers can make a difference by making men and women feel that they belong,” said Nigh, a founder of the Dismas Fellowship, a bi-monthly meeting that provides assistance to individuals who have recently been released from prison.

Imam Yasin Dwyer, a Muslim Chaplain, emphasized the need for community support of Muslim inmates.

“You can judge the value of a community on how they deal with the marginalized, destitute, needy and poor.”

Muslim chaplains rehabilitate Canada inmates

TORONTO – Seeking to provide religious and spiritual help for inmates in Canadian prisons, Muslim chaplains are discussing the role of the community in helping those who have lost their voices and rehabilitating the offenders.

“Pay attention to the factors that lead to incarceration,” Imam Michael AbdurRashid Taylor, Executive Director of the Islamic Chaplaincy Services Canada, told OnIslam.net.

“It is important for our community to be proactive rather than reactive.”

A chaplaincy awareness forum was hosted earlier this week at the Islamic Institute of Toronto in Scarborough.

The discussions focused on means of providing religious and spiritual help to inmates and ways of reintegrating the offenders into society.

The chaplains also discussed their work and how the community can provide support to incarcerated prisoners.

“The challenge of all faith communities is to run chaplaincy services given the cuts in government funding,” said Imam Abdul Hai Patel, President of the Ontario Multifaith Council and the Canadian Council of Imam’s Interfaith Relations Director.

The forum was held to offer support for the growing number of chaplaincy services such as those offered by the Ottawa-based Islam Care Center which has been at the forefront of supporting chaplains in Ontario prisons.

The Center provides two permanent Muslim Chaplains to all the federal penitentiaries in Ontario.

Working in partnership with Correctional Service Canada and the Ontario Multifaith Council, the Center has fostered an environment that allows for prisoners to develop themselves while serving their sentences and then to reintegrate back into their community.

The Islam Care Center (ICC) ensures that inmates receive a prayer mat and Qur’an, in a language of their choice, as well as access to other Islamic literature, and monitor that their religious rights are preserved.

ICC also tries to ensure that inmates who are released can re integrate into society in an easy manner.

Community Role

The forum saw a moving testimony by Ahmed Habhab, who was sent to prison after being convicted for drug trafficking.

“I was involved in ecstasy trafficking,” said Habhab.

“I thought I would never get caught.”

Habhab was arrested and served a prison sentence but turned his life around while on bail.

He talked about being ostracized by the community after being released and he had an advice for Muslims.

“Be conscious of the day when you will stand before your Lord.”

A special message was delivered by Jim Karygiannis, the long-standing federal Liberal Member of Parliament for the Scarborough-Agincourt riding.

“You have to get involved and make a difference,” Karygiannis told the audience.

“Do something so that at the end of your life, your life would not be wasted.

“We’ve to accept each other as equals,” he added. “There are four words I want you to remember – respect, accept, celebrate, embrace – [these words] make us part of the human race.”

Reverend Harry Nigh, a Mennonite minister and chaplain, asked the audience to provide assistance to inmates once they leave prison.

“You hold the key to freedom for people coming out of prison,” he said.

“Community volunteers can make a difference by making men and women feel that they belong,” said Nigh, a founder of the Dismas Fellowship, a bi-monthly meeting that provides assistance to individuals who have recently been released from prison.

Imam Yasin Dwyer, a Muslim Chaplain, emphasized the need for community support of Muslim inmates.

“You can judge the value of a community on how they deal with the marginalized, destitute, needy and poor.”