Khadija Haffajee

Khadija Haffajee 1937-2020

A Muslim Canadian teacher, motivator and social worker

Khadija Haffajee, a pioneer Ottawa Muslimah, passed away Sept. 17. “Aunty” to the young and old alike, about 100 mask-wearing mourners, among them her husband Dr. Mazhar Hasan and some children, attended her outdoor janaza and sunny burial at the Beechwood National Cemetery the following day.

She told Khadijah Vakily (muslimlink.ca, June 22, 2016) that based on her experience in South Africa, she had avoided meeting Muslims. She only became a very committed Muslimah in 1968, when her newfound Pakistani friends encouraged her to attend the MSA conference at Hamilton’s McMaster University.

She said, “I went, and subhanallah it changed my life. Because it was the first time in my life that I heard highly educated — this means Western-educated — Muslims speak positively about being Muslim. I’d never met them before. My father was one of them, but I didn’t know him [because] he died when we were young.”

The following year, Haffajee was introduced to the Ottawa crowd when the MSA conference was held at Carleton University. Moving to Ottawa at the end of the school year, she started attending prayers at a makeshift mosque located in the small home that would eventually become the Ottawa Muslim Association.

Toward the end of her life, Haffajee was closely associated with the Lotus Community-Rhoda Masjid in Ottawa’s Eastend. Representing its resident imam at the burial, Stephane Pressault said “Khadija’s hand worked in the community with her heart in Allah,” for she was a familiar face in the Ottawa community and beyond, a woman whose hand touched almost every North American Muslim community.

During her career, she was founding board member and treasurer (1976) of the Ottawa Muslim Association and its treasurer, teacher at the Ottawa Mosque’s weekend Islamic school, president of the former Ottawa Muslim Women’s Auxiliary (later the Ottawa Muslim Women’s Organization) which played a big role in starting the first Ottawa Mosque and collaborated with the Islamic School of Ottawa-sponsored Long Bay Summer Camp for youth, Human Concern International and Islam Care’s Social Service.

She also traveled nationwide as the Council of Muslim Communities in Canada woman’s representative and the MSA.

In December 1989 she married Dr. Mazhar Hasan, a physicist from Illinois, to whom she had been introduced by mutual friends. As they both held teaching positions, they devised a commuter marriage — seeing each other every two weeks and during vacations. Five years later, they settled in Ottawa. Within one year, she acquired a ready-made family when she became a wife, stepmother and grandmother!

Dr. Hasan fully supported her work. For instance, they were members of the Christian Muslim Dialogue Group of Ottawa for several years. Dedicated to outreach, she was a member of the Multicultural Advisory Committee at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, the Children’s Aid Society, the Multifaith Housing Initiative and Religions for PeaceCanada movement.

Haffajee was also active overseas. She was invited to Malawi and Zimbabwe to train young Muslimahs, worked on location with Afghan refugees in Peshawar (1986) and within Afghanistan with an interfaith organization (2003).

She attended the Muslim Women’s Conference in Sudan and was elected its assistant secretary for International Affairs for the International Muslim Women’s Union (1996) and the World Conference on Religion and Peace Assembly in Amman, Jordan (1999).

In 2000, “The Ottawa Citizen,” assigned her to be one of the writers of a weekly column “Ask the Religious Expert,” which included other faith leaders.

Haffajee was the first Muslimah and at that time the only woman to be elected (1997) to ISNA’s Majlis Shura, a post she retained until 2008. At the same time, she remained active in ISNA Canada and also presented at several ISNA Conventions in North America. She was part of a ground-breaking 1972 event — MSA, convening its annual meeting in Toronto, invited her to address a mixed-gender session. At the 2002 ISNA Convention, she participated in the “Overcoming Obstacles to Women’s Participation in our Communities” session.

She presided over marriages, gave talks on matrimonial relationships, held halaqas in her home for English/French revert women married to Muslim immigrants and Muslimahs in intermarriage relationships, held suicide prevention and other seminars, hosted at her home a vice-chancellor of Yarmouk University (Jordan) who gave a talk on Islam and Muslims and initiated the annual “Expressions of Muslim Women” event so that those living in the National Capital Region could showcase their talents in poetry, music, theatre and comedy.

Born in Pietermaritzburg, in then apartheid South Africa, she moved to England and then to Canada in 1966, where she eventually became a citizen. She taught at the Henry Munro Middle School.

She was knowledgeable about the Quran, Hadith, Muslim issues in general and Muslimah issues in particular; an articulate communicator at ease with public speaking; and a friendly teacher even after retirement to whoever sought her out.

A great lover of people, she was widely loved in return and was well known for her friendliness, hospitality, sociability and laughter.

Her legacy to the Ottawa Muslim community is huge, and she will be greatly missed by everyone who knew her. ih

Zulf M Khalfan was a two-term member of the OMA’s executive board, former editor of its Ottawa Muslim Newsletter and chair of OMA’s joint board and trust committee. He is also a former editor of Islamic Horizons.