Dispelling misinformation about Islam
Aruba Mahmud is a proud Sarnian.
Born and raised in Ontario, the outreach secretary for the Sarnia Muslim Association spent her formative years in the city attending school, volunteering in the community and — after an eight-year sojourn in London where she received three post-secondary degrees in art and education — getting married and finding work with the Sarnia-Lambton Local Immigration Partnership.
Yet being raised as a Muslim in Sarnia wasn’t always an easy experience, Mahmud said. And it became significantly worse following the terrorist attacks on New York on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Even just being a visible minority, having brown skin, I remember there being some racism when I was growing up,” she said. “But then after 9/11, kids we went to school with all our lives started calling me and my friends terrorists. And then there were so many more things like that, pretty much everything started getting blamed on our religion.”
When Mahmud decided in 2003 to begin wearing a hijab — a veil traditionally worn by some Muslim women — she began getting dirty looks and comments.
Prejudice against Muslims has reached unprecedented heights, Mahmud says, because of a combination of misrepresentation and distortion in the media, and major misunderstandings about Islam.
Which is why she’s eager to go to schools, to community groups, service clubs, seniors’ residences to talk about her faith.
And so far, as the Sarnia Muslim Association’s outreach secretary, most people have been pretty receptive in listening to her message.
“It’s not all negative. A lot of people are just curious,” Mahmud said. “I still get approached by people who just want to ask questions and I absolutely love answering those questions, especially when people are positive.”
She recently spoke to the Golden K Kiwanis Club.
Islamophobia — or an irrational fear of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims — has grown exponentially over the past few years, Mahmud said. A Statistics Canada report says hate crimes against Muslims in Canada doubled between 2012 and 2014, and according to a 2013 poll, 54 per cent of Canadians report having a unfavourable view of Islam.
The January massacre in Quebec City, where six people were killed and 19 injured after a gun- man stormed into a mosque and started shooting, was the culmination of a decades-long rise in the normalization of hatred against Muslims, she said.
“The Quebec attack, it really shook people,” Mahmud continued. “I think it was a wake-up call for people who thought ‘sure there’s racism, there’s discrimination but it’s not that bad.’ It opened people’s eyes to the fact there are people who are literally willing to go out and murder Muslims.”
Yet the attack also opened her eyes to how many people within her own community were supportive.
“But being the outreach secretary, I got 50-something messages on Facebook, I got emails, phone calls from all sorts of people throughout the community, all positive. And when the mosque held the open house and so many people came out, it was just really, really beautiful.”
In spite of that support, Mahmud said there is still a mountain of misinformation that Muslims need to deal with.
“Is terrorism real? Of course it is. But whenever something is done by a small group of people in the name of Islam — even though it might take place on the other side of the world — we’re held responsible for it ... People keep wanting us, as Muslims, to apologize for every terrorist attack carried out in the name of Islam, even though these terrorist attacks go fundamentally against the teachings of Islam.
Mahmud expressed some cautious optimism that things will become better for Canada’s Muslim community.
“Through calm and measured dialogue, I think we can start challenging Islamophobia and start getting past those stereotypes.”