Ottawa Muslims honoured with Diamond Jubilee Medals

The Ottawa Muslim community honoured its own Jan. 19 in a ceremony that was equal parts Canadian maple leaf and Islamic crescent moon.

The event, hosted by the Muslim Co-ordinating Council and the Ottawa Muslim Association, was held to honour the 20 MCC members who were recipients of the Diamond Jubilee Medal for service to Canadian society.

For MCC president Mohammed Zakaria Khan, the evening was an important display of unity.

“It’s a blessing to see so many people coming together to serve their country,” he said.

“We are trying to work together. We are Canadian. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what your faith is. We are one nation and under one flag.”

The MCC represents 16 mosques and 40 Muslim organizations with the aim of helping its members, particularly the less fortunate and disadvantaged, to become productive members of society and to help new arrivals find their place in Canada.

A particular source of pride was the response to a call for blood donors, Khan said. Each time a clinic was organized for the Canadian Blood Service, the response was so overwhelming that donors had to be turned away, he said.

Among the 20 medal recipients were Maher Arar, the Ottawa electrical engineer whose story of imprisonment and torture in Syria after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks shone a light on the excesses of the war on terrorism, and his wife, Ottawa academic and human rights campaigner Monia Mazigh.

Honoured posthumously was Wafa Dabbagh, a lieutenant-commander in the Royal Canadian Navy when she died of cancer in June 2012 and the first woman in the Canadian military to wear a hijab.

Among the guests at the ceremony at the Ottawa Mosque on Northwestern Avenue were Mayor Jim Watson, Coun. Eli El-Chantiry, MPP Phil McNeely and MPs Royal Galipeau and Paul Dewar.

Dewar, the NDP foreign affairs critic and keynote speaker, said the recipients demonstrated “in the best way, Canadian principles.”

“It was a very conscious decision on your part to open your doors and open your hearts,” Dewar said.

The Diamond Jubilee Medal was struck in 2012 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. Some 60,000 Canadians have been awarded the medal in recognition of having made “a significant contribution to a particular province, territory, region or community within Canada, or an achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada.”