This year’s annual Islam Awareness Week (IAW) hosted by the Carleton Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) has drawn significantly more participation than previous years in light of the recent terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand.
To honour victims of the Christchurch attack, this year’s IAW held a minute of silence around 1:30-2:00 p.m. every day of the week.
Noor Shubiar, coordinator of IAW and a committee member of the MSA, said the decision to add in the minute of silence is to “show that we are all coming together to pay our respects to what has happened in New Zealand.”
“The least we can do is raise awareness about it,” she said. “I feel like a lot of people have heard of [the New Zealand attack] in the media and they might be interested in asking questions about Islam and finding out who we are as a Muslim community.
The week-long event—which took place March 18-22—began just three days after the two mosque shootings in Christchurch, which killed at least 50 people and left 41 still critically injured.
IAW volunteer records retrieved by the Charlatan have shown increased student participation this year, with over 130 free Qur’ans handed out within the first two days of the event.
Ahmed El Khazndar, president of the MSA, said Campus Safety has also been regularly patrolling IAW events this year due to safety concerns for Muslim students and participants.
“In terms of providing assurance to both the volunteers and attendees of the event, we did contact Campus Safety, because they are aware of the shooting that happened,” he said, adding up to 800 participants have been seen at events this year.
El Khaznder said he thinks misconceptions surrounding Islam are mostly due to a portrayal of the faith by the media.
‘The media, at times, takes the extremes of people, for any group, doesn’t only have to be Muslims, he said.
Carleton administration condemned the attack in a press release issued shortly after news broke on March 15, condemning “all attacks on Muslims and the underlying anti-Muslim hate and bigotry that is reported to have inspired this incident.”
The IAW features a variety of Islam-related activities including two guest lectures, public prayers, a virtual reality tour of Mecca, free Qur’ans translated into different languages, a hijab table, Arabic calligraphy, henna, and a bake sale.
Shubiar said student engagement is extremely important in order to demystify misconceptions surrounding the Islamic faith.
“That’s why it’s important for [non-Muslims] to go out in the world and to ask actual Muslims that they have in their school, or in their workplace, or to go to a local mosque and ask questions,” she said.
Shubiar added that although the main message of IAW is to spread awareness of Islam, she hopes Muslim students feel closer to their faith as well.
“Mainly, I hope for them to be more proud of their religion because we’re doing it in a public space. At times, as a Muslim in the western world, it can be maybe intimidating—especially wearing the hijab—you might feel unsafe at times,” she said. “But doing events like this, I hope that [Muslims] would feel more proud and more confident and don’t be ashamed of your religion.”
Sara Ho, a fourth-year public affairs and policy management student, said she’s been attending IAW for the past two years because her friend—a member of the MSA—encouraged her to come learn about Islam.
“I’ve always had great experiences here,” Ho said. “Usually you can find me at the booth with the Qur’ans because I love to discuss the Qur’an and the teachings.”
Ho added she believes events like IAW are successful because they are approachable to people of all faiths.
Lily Akagbosu, Carleton University Students’ Association vice-president (student issues), said the New Zealand attack is an example of how awareness of Islam needs to be sought out from non-Muslim students rather than Muslim students bearing the brunt of the work.
“I think as much as some people might say, ‘yes this is an opportunity for Islam to be promoted in the right lens as a religion of peace,’ which is what it is, I think the onus is really on others [non-Muslims],” she said. “They have to do the extra work in educating themselves because if people are oppressed, it’s not up to them to make those changes. It’s the people who are oppressing them.”
“The responsibility is more on non-Muslims to create,” Akagbosu said, “to renew their awareness of Islam and actually take out the time to learn about the religion and unlearn the bias that they’ve had over the years.”
Image by Serena Halani
