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The Muslim Link
JMO then reviewed the attendee list and notified the Ottawa City public health authority of the steps it was taking. The authority relayed its satisfaction with the measures taken. ■ South Nepean Muslim Community (SNMC). Imam Zijad Delic called the community’s senior members to inquire about their health and to ask if they needed any help. He counseled families experiencing domestic tensions, including any contemplating divorce, due to marital stress. He even paid a personal visit, while observing social distancing, to a concerned member’s home. ■ Centre Islamique de l’Outaouais (CIO): Outaouais Islamic Center. Across the Ottawa River, on NCR’s Quebec side, Imam Ahmed Limame of CIO (the Gatineau Mosque) participated in the joint UMO-OG community drive. He recorded and circulated video lectures on the CIO’s website, inviting the audience to reflect on dealing with virus-related anxieties and guiding them spiritually toward tranquility and being pragmatic in adhering to the required public health protocols. ■ TheIslam Care Center. The center took part in home delivering food baskets and distributing zakat to the deserving. Its Muslim F amily Services of Ottawa (MFSO) wing offered counseling services, said chairman Qamar Masood. ■ At the Mosque of Mercy, Imam Ismail Albatnuni presented evening study circles on YouTube. Shaykh Munir Shalghum continued virtual tafseer (Quranic commentary) classes on Zoom. ■ Kanata Muslim Association (KMA). KMA closed its prayer space and suspended all “in-person activities” indefinitely. In coordination with UMO-OG, those needing food or other help were invited t o contact its staff. Imam Sikander Hashemi and his volunteers made audio or video calls via phone, Zoom, Skype, Facetime or WhatsApp to help members through this challenging period. ■ Other NCR mosques, organizations, and charities: Masjid Bilal, the Ottawa Muslim Women’s Organization, the Islamic Society of Gloucester, and HCI have all taken similar measures.
For those who still want to go to the mosque, the public health authorities’ guidelines have been somewhat of an impediment. Many regular attendees felt spiritually uneasy, for they can no longer go to the prayer hall for meditation and inner comfort. After all, Sulaiman said, the mosque is the environment in which our faith grows. Everyone has done their best to adjust to the online offerings.
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When the Ontario government began its phased easing of restric tions, the mosques resumed controlled attendance at congregational prayers. At OMA and SNMC, for example, 30% of the congregation is allowed in the prayer halls. At OMA, attendees have to pre-register online, while at SNMC they have to write their names on a sheet so volunteers could keep count.
Obviously, as contact tracing has become an important protocol, both requirements would now be useful as a contact list, if it should be required, as was the case at Jami Omar.
Both mosques are serving more than one congregation so more members can attend. Traditionally, the community gathers in the mosque for the five daily prayers.
The pandemic has made those who run the mosques devise creative adjustments in managing attendance. Most importantly, they have taken the required measures in stride as mosque goers started trickling back in — congregants are to arrive about 15 minutes before the regular prayer time, make ablution at home, bring their own prayer mat, use hand sanitizer as they enter, wear a facemask and observe social distancing. They are told to enter through one door and to leave immediately after the prayer via a one-way exit.
Overall, community members have been following the public health safety guidelines just as they would follow any traditional requirement advised by the Prophet. ih The Muslim Link: Running the Online Hub for Canadian Muslims An originally print-based local Muslim newspaper continues to expand and evolve
BY CHELBY MARIE DAIGLE
The difficult climate of post-9/11 Canada required a forum in which Muslim voices could speak out and be heard.
At that time, Ottawa’s Muslims were facing heightened scrutiny and fear; however, there was also a growing amount of political advocacy as the community rallied to demand the return of Syrian-Canadian engineer Mahar Arar, who had been detained by the U.S. during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 and deported not to Canada, but rendered to Syria, where he faced torture under allegations of terrorism. Years later, the Canadian government would apologize. Chelby Daigle (center) receives an
In September 2002, the award for her work with Muslim Muslim Link (https://muslimlink.ca) began operating as a newsletter intended to create such an outlet. In Link from MuslimFest flanked by Tariq Syed from Muslim Fest (left) and Mohammad Dourou, publisher Muslim Link (right) its first year, a small team compiled, published and distributed seven issues on a variety of subjects. Each issue had a distribution of 4,000 copies and covered jumah locations and Islamic schools in the National Capital Region (NCR; Ottawa in Ontario and Gatineau in Quebec). One year later, it made history by becoming the region’s first Muslim English-language newspaper.
Syrian-Canadian Mohammad Dourou, the current publisher, started out by helping with its distribution. When it looked like the newspaper would have to close for financial reasons, he took over as its publisher, ensured its continuation and designed its website, which offered an online directory and events listings.
My journey with the Muslim Link started in 2012, when I was asked to share a job posting for an administrative assistant to help run the newspaper while Dourou was working abroad. I had developed a reputation as being someone who was good at sharing opportunities through my social network. I shared this one, but something about it spoke to me: I wanted to apply for the position.
I was already primarily engaged in working with racialized and newcomer communities and issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Not only I was pretty busy, but I had just learned of the impoverished conditions in which my Nigerian father was living and was planning to visit him for the first time. I wanted to start helping him, so having some extra cash seemed like a good idea. Little did I know that this decision would change the Muslim Link’s fate.
I applied, and Dourou hired me to help him run the newspaper, as he had to work in Dubai for a couple of years. My role was simple: help supervise the paper’s compilation, ensure that it went to print on time, oversee its distribution and collect payment from advertisers.
At the time I came to work there, it had an irregularly updated website. I soon realized that this website had a lot of potential to share important information with the wider community.
WEBSITE.
As a convert myself, I was often frustrated by how difficult it seemed to be to access information about events, classes, job postings and other opportunities if you didn’t know the “right” Muslims. Viewing this as a real barrier to equity within Ottawa’s Muslim community, I made an effort to share whatever information came my way.
I also realized that learning how to post information on the website would give me an even better way of sharing such information. So although it wasn’t part of my job description, I asked to be trained to perform this task. As a result, I soon developed its events listings and directory, which dramatically increased the newspaper’s readership. In fact, it would be accurate to say that this initiative changed the Muslim Link’s direction.
I also spotted some serious equity issues. For example, we could interview non-hijab-wearing Muslimahs but not publish their photos. Considering this unfair, I suggested that their photos should be published as long a s they were dressed modestly — it was soon accepted.
Another issue was the newspaper’s acceptance of Twelver Shia business ads but the relative lack of stories about this community. When their local Islamic school was ranked second in the city during the annual roundup of Ontario elementary schools, I decided to write about it. A local imam who was trusted by the team helped me overcome some unexpected resistance and write what turned out t o be a quite popular story.
After its publication, one of my friends went to a local Twelver Shia-owned halal meat store and saw the recent issue on the checkout counter. When she said that her friend worked at the Muslim Link, he replied, “I never thought they would write about us. I am so happy they finally did.” By “us” he meant members of his community.
This saddened me, as it made me understand that not all of Ottawa’s Muslims felt that the local community paper was really for them. However, it also inspired me to develop the
newspaper’s diversity, equity and inclusion policy to ensure that we would strive harder to reflect the actual demographics of all self-identified Muslims in Ottawa-Gatineau.
By 2014, my role had evolved from being an assistant to being the editor in chief. This was difficult, because although I realized my changes, particularly in terms of the website and content, were helping to increase the readership, I knew that I was entering some uncertain territory by trying to make it more inclusive. In early 2014, I met someone who would help build my confidence in my leadership role — Tayyibah Taylor, founder and editor in chief of Azizah Magazine for Muslim Women.
While she was in Ottawa for several U.S. Embassy-commissioned events, we discussed the challenges I faced in trying to make the Muslim Link more inclusive. Having faced similar challenges at Azizah, she stated that “If you worked to help readers understand that your commitment is to tell uplifting stories about Muslims, including Muslims like themselves, then they often become more accepting of diversity than we realize.” This advice gave me the confidence I needed to continue making the Muslim Link a welcoming space for all Muslims. I am forever grateful for this chance to have a quality discussion with her; she passed away later that year.
In October 2014, it became clear that the Muslim Link would be financially viable only if we made it an exclusively online publication. Fortunately, the work I had done over the years to build up its online content resulted in a smooth transition. I realized that being online meant that we could now cater to the needs of our growing Toronto-Mississauga and Montreal readership as well.
At this point, Dourou and I began an exciting period of innovative website design to cater to a wider national readership. I started developing online directories and events listings for the Greater Toronto Area and Montreal. Learning that there was no single place where one could easily access regularly updated information about Muslim organizations and activities in those cities, I again used my instincts as a “community outsider” to make navigating Muslim spaces easier through our site. Thus, the newspaper went from being Ottawa’s community newspaper to being the Online Hub for Muslims nationwide.
Over the years, we have added online directories and events listings for over 14 cities nationwide, from Halifax to Vancouver. Now, all Canadians who want to have a better understanding of what Canada’s Muslims are doing can visit our website.
During this years-long process, I have learned so much about Canada. Local Muslim communities often reflect the dynamics of the cities in which they settled. In the Prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Mennonites, a Christian minority community that settled here during the 19th and 20th centuries, play a major role in settlement and social service agencies and have built an interesting relationship with the region’s Muslim organizations. In fact, their organizations often have a longer history of sponsoring Muslim refugees through partnerships between mosques and churches than we see in Ontario.
While working with the Muslim Link, I have interviewed Muslims who were sponsored by mosques in Saskatchewan during the 1990s, whereas many mosques in Ontario and Quebec only recently began sponsoring Syrian refugees with federal government encouragement. I hope to share more such stories to help foster closer ties among the provinces’ Muslim communities.
The Muslim Link has recently been accepted into the Indie News Challenge, a competitive program for journalist-entrepreneurs seeking support to make their projects more sustainable from a business perspective. I’m excited to see what we can learn from other community news sites that are trying to deliver independent news to more diverse audiences. I’m also looking forward to developing more skills to help ensure that the Muslim Link celebrates its 20th anniversary in September 2022, insha’ Allah. ih
