ISLAM IN CANADA
Black Muslims in Canada A more accurate version of Canada’s history is coming to light BY FATIMAH JACKSON-BEST
T
he year 2019 marked the launching of the findings of the Black Muslim Initiative (https:// blackmusliminitiative.ca), a research project focused on the perspectives of Black Muslims living in Canada. The Tessellate Institute (http://tessellateinstitute.com) supported this grassroots organization’s endeavor to address anti-Black racism and Islamophobia. The project broke new ground, for it was the first time a systematic review of the published and unpublished literature on Black Muslims in Canada had been conducted. As the lead researcher and as a Black Muslimah, I went into it not knowing what the results would be, but confident that the outcome would significantly amplify our histories and experiences in this country. More than one year has passed, and the findings’ significance remains undiminished. During this time, Black people around the world have added their voices and experiences to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which originated as a hashtag used by activists in the U.S. in 2013 after the murderer of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, was acquitted of all charges. In 2020, we have watched it expand as Black people worldwide have used this moment to identify the specific forms of racism that affect us in our respective countries, cities and communities. The BLM movement is part of a long history of global liberation struggles led by Black communities. Many of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents joined anti-colonial movements in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Some were active in North America’s civil rights and anti-segregation struggles.
However, Covid-19 has made this year’s resurgence of BLM even stronger by making the underlying structural inequalities and inequities almost impossible to ignore. We are all seeing in real-time just how fragile our systems are as they grapple with the pandemic. As a result, the inherently flawed, unjust and often violent system that treats Black people as if we are disposable and our communities are expendable can no longer be denied. Black Canadians are no strangers to systemic and institutional forms of racism, violence and anti-Black racism. Despite efforts to mute this part of its history, Canada enslaved Africans for 200+ years and, later on, enacted segregationist policies that further marginalized Black people. Of course, this dehumanization was enabled by settler colonialism and the genocide of Indigenous people. Today we see these systems’ legacies in the over-policing of Black and Indigenous people, which leads to the over-representation of both groups in prisons as well as their higher rates of death and violence at the hands of police and the state. Many Black Muslims in Canada also share the experience of anti-Black Islamophobia (Mugabo, D. I. [2016]. Geographies and futurities of being. http://www.academia.edu/31307891). In fact, the term “Anti-Black Islamophobia” — defined as racism enacted by non-Black Muslims and non-Muslims toward Black Muslims and individuals who are perceived as having that identity — was central to the report’s research findings. This is because such racism often erases us from the dominant narratives about Muslim identity, the lack of meaningful inclusion in the public sphere, tokenism, ignorance or denial of the kinds of discrimination we
46 ISLAMIC HORIZONS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
