Shaping Muslim Futures: Youth Visions and Activist Praxis

By Sameena Eidoo

For Muslims to project themselves into the future is a radical act in a world where the lives of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslims are threatened. your book. Shaping Muslim Futures: Youth Visions and Activist Praxis

• Language: English
• Publisher: DIO Press Inc
• Release date: Sep 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781645041825

Sameena Eidoo

Sameena Eidoo, PhD, is an educator and educational scholar in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE, University of Toronto. Sameena's scholarly interests include humanizing pedagogies, global Islam, spirituality, solidarity, and alternative futures. Her writing appears in scholar and practitioner-oriented publications, including the edited collections: Disrupting Colonialist Pedagogies; In This Together: Blackness, Indigeneity and Hip Hop; Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice; and the Handbook of Islamic Education. Sameena is a recipient of OISE's Teaching Award for Excellence in Initial Teacher Education.

Book preview

For we as Muslims to project ourselves into the future is a radical act, especially in a world where the lives of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have been and continue to be threatened. Shaping Muslim Futures: Youth Visions and Activist Praxis is a guidebook that weaves narratives of activist Muslim youth situated in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ontario, Canada, shaping their desired futures, and creates space for readers to clarify their own. Guided by an unwavering belief in the possibility of collective liberation, Shaping Muslim Futures is designed to facilitate exploration of alternative futures.

The term alternative futures refers to the wide expanse of futures, from personal to global. Alternative futures include possible, probable, and preferred futures (Inayatullah, 2008; Sardar, 2019). Possible futures are all possible, probable, and preferred future scenarios that might imaginably happen. Probable futures are all future scenarios that are likely to come about according to short-term projections and interactions of contemporary cultural, economic, political, social, and technological trends. Preferred futures are all future scenarios that are desired, given individual and collective values. Our inner worlds shape our external realities and our external realities shape our inner worlds. Underlying alternative futures are worldviews and myths about each future (Inayatullah, 2008). How we perceive the world shapes how we perceive alternative futures, and vice versa (Inayatullah, 2008; Sardar, 2019).

Shaping Muslim Futures is written for youth who self-identify as Muslim—spiritually, religiously, culturally and/or politically. It is for youth who firmly self-identify as Muslim, as well as for youth who are questioning if they are Muslim enough or Muslim at all. Other racialized youth may resonate with the narratives woven throughout. It is for anyone who is committed to practising more just and liberatory futures where Muslim and other racialized youth are thriving.

In what follows, I address the need for this guidebook in a context where Muslim futures are under threat. I then explain how the guidebook is organized and how readers might choose to use it.

Threats to Muslim Futures: A Rationale for this Guidebook

The need for this guidebook stems in part from what can only be described as threats to Muslim futures: that is, Islamophobia and interlocking oppressions. Canada and the GTA more specifically are an important focal point for this guidebook, because that is where the research informing this guidebook took place. Islamophobia, broadly defined as an extreme fear or hostility toward Muslims and Islam (Runnymede Trust, 1997), permeates social reality in Canadian society and schools. A chilling example of Islamophobic violence in Canada was the mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City in 2017. On the winter evening of January 29, 2017, a young White man with a gun entered the Islamic Culture Centre of Quebec City and opened fire on worshippers. Six Muslim men were fatally shot, and another 19 injured. We remember Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Abdelkrim Hassane, and Azzedine Soufiane. This was the largest mass shooting in Canada in 25 years, and the first time Muslims had been killed in a mosque in North America.

Recognizing the pervasiveness of Islamophobia in Canada, Liberal Member of Parliament Iqra Khalid introduced the anti-Islamophobia motion (M-103 Systemic Racism and Religious Discrimination). Khalid had originally presented the motion condemning Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination to the House of Commons on December 5, 2016, prior to the mass shooting. The motion was debated in the months following the shooting, on February 15, 2017 and March 17, 2017, and finally passed on March 23, 2017 (House of Commons Canada, 2017). Yet, a public opinion poll following the mass shooting at the Islamic Culture Centre of Quebec City found that if Canadians and not their elective representatives had been voting on the motion, the anti-Islamophobia motion would have failed (Angus Reid Institute, 2017). Indeed, even after the chilling instance of Islamophobic violence, the poll found that the majority of Canadians still believed that Islamophobia is overblown (Angus Reid Institute, 2017).

While grieving, Muslims and allied peoples mobilized for accountability. On January 28, 2021, the Liberal Government of Canada officially declared January 29, 2021 the first National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action Against Islamophobia (Canadian Heritage, 2021). Shaping Muslim Futures in the context of such violence becomes all the more paramount.

Islamophobia is a global racial structure that exacts direct and indirect violence to Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim. Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality is a lens that reveals the intercentricity of race and racism with other forms of oppression. For example, Islamophobia is a form of racism that interlocks with White supremacy, settler-colonialism, capitalism, anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and ableism, among other oppressions. The Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP), an initiative of the Center for Race & Gender, University of California Berkeley, offers the following definition of Islamophobia:

Islamophobia is a contrived fear or prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocentric and Orientalist global power structures. It is directed at a perceived or real Muslim threat through the maintenance and extension of existing disparities in economic, political, social and cultural relations, while rationalizing the necessity to deploy violence as a tool to achieve civilizational rehab of the target communities (Muslim or otherwise). Islamophobia reintroduces and reaffirms a global racial structure through which resource distribution disparities are maintained and extended. (IRDP, 2021)

Muslim girls and women, particularly those who are visibly Muslim wearing hijabs or niqabs, are vulnerable to gendered Islamophobia—a form of Islamophobia that interlocks with sexism and misogyny (Ahmed-Chan, 2018; Zine, 2006). Eurocentric and Orientalist narratives continue to frame Muslim women as exotic, alluring, subservient and victims in need of saving from Muslim men (Abu Lughod, 2002; Zine, 2006). In Canadian Muslims: Demographics, Discrimination, Religiosity, and Voting, Sarah Shah (2019) presents a nuanced analysis of the National Household Survey (2011), General Social Survey (2013) and the Environics Institute Survey of Muslims in Canada (2016). Muslim women in Canada report experiencing religious and gendered discrimination more than Muslim men in Canada (Shah, 2019). Muslim women in Canada relate experiencing discrimination in workplaces, educational spaces, when accessing public services, and while traveling through airports or crossing the border more than Muslim men in Canada (Shah, 2019). Moreover, Muslim women in Canada believe religious and gendered discrimination will increase, and therefore are less optimistic about the future (Shah, 2019). These compounding experiences of religious and gendered discrimination alter Muslim women’s perceptions about the world and their possible futures.

Black Muslim women in Canada report the highest percentage of discriminatory experience (Shah, 2019). In addition to religious and gendered discrimination, Black Muslim women in Canada are subjected to anti-Black racism. Islamophobia interlocks with all other oppressions, and therefore dismantling Islamophobia requires dismantling all oppressions that threaten the lives of Black girls and women. As Barbara Smith and the rest of the Combahee River Collective (1974—1980)—Beverly Smith, Demita Frazier, Cheryl Clarke, Akasha Hull, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Chirlane McCray, and Audre Lorde—remind us, Until Black women are free, none of us will be free. Indeed, because our social and political identities are mediated by power, the pathways to alternative futures must be forged using an intersectional approach.

In addition to being a global racial structure and pervasive issue in Canadian society, Islamophobia permeates institutions like the Canadian education system. On November 27, 2019, the Ontario Minister of Education announced a formal review of the Peel District School Board (PDSB), primarily to address concerns of systemic anti-Black racism. On February 28, 2020, the Ontario Ministry of Education-appointed reviewers Ena Chadha, Suzanne Herbert and Shawn Richard submitted their review of the PDSB to the Minister. The report details pervasive anti-Black racism throughout the PDSB. The report also documents various manifestations of Islamophobia in PDSB schools:

We heard concerns about Islamophobia and were provided with French curriculum materials that were clearly Islamophobic, conveyed blatant hostility to the Muslim community and an ignorance of the basic tenants of Islam. Muslim students, who account for 22.4 [percent] of the PDSB secondary student community and are the largest religious group within the PDSB community, have been the targets of Islamophobia. Citing conflict referable to prayers in PDSB schools and the presence of White supremacists at a meeting of the Board of Trustees, we heard from students, families and educators of the real need for an Islamic Coordinator to support Muslim students. (Chadha, Herbert, & Richard, 2020, pp. 5-6)

Students told us that their teachers are not prepared to deal with racism, nor do they have the tools to step up and do what is necessary to improve the culture in schools. Students shared their desire to have open communication with teachers and students about differences. Muslim students who observe Ramadan, for example, told us that teachers not understand their experience or respect their need for religious accommodation, noting that although some Muslim students wish to pray five times a day, they do not have the means to do that at school. Despite racialized students being the majority of the population, teachers are predominantly non-racialized. Having a teaching staff that is representative of the students would allow students to focus on learning, rather than having to focus so much of their time and emotional energy navigating an education system where they are made to feel like outsiders. (Chadha et al., 2020, p. 35)

Muslim youth comprise the largest religious group in the PDSB, yet some teachers of Muslim youth do not demonstrate an understanding of or respect for their needs. The examples of Islamophobia documented in the external review of the PDSB (Chadha, et al., 2020) are ways in which Muslim futures are threatened in classrooms and schools. An insidious consequence of Islamophobia in school settings is that Muslim youth may begin to internalize myths and misinformation about Islam and Muslims. For Muslim youth, internalized Islamophobia—developing beliefs and behaviours that are Islamophobic while remaining mired in Islamophobia—is especially harmful. As a guidebook, Shaping Muslim Futures aspires to encourage Muslim and other racialized youth to recognize the wisdom of their lived lives, confront patterns of internalized oppression and internalized dominance, and contribute to radically reimagining and rebuilding worlds anew.

How to Use This Book

Shaping Muslim Futures amplifies the narratives of activist Muslim youth situated in the GTA who envisioned more just futures for themselves, their families and communities. It is organized into three chapters: 1. A Framework for Shaping Muslim Futures, 2. Sites of Learning and 3. Sites of Reflection and Action.

A Framework for Shaping Muslim Futures brings together concepts from different knowledge traditions that facilitate engagement with the activist Muslim youths’ narratives at the heart of this guidebook, as well as guidance for values-clarification work toward more just futures. This chapter also provides a snapshot of the multiplicity of Muslims in the world and in Canada. Canada, and more specifically the GTA, is an important focal point for this guidebook, because that is where the research that informed the development of this guidebook is situated. The chapter closes with an overview of the research that informed this guidebook.

Sites of Learning explores the learning contexts that activist Muslim youth identified as critical to raising their awareness of their social realities as well as their capabilities to transform those realities. The sites of learning featured in this chapter include families, neighborhoods, secular and faith-based schools, and hip hop culture.

Sites of Reflection and Action documents the projects that the activist Muslim youth were engaged with at the time of the research. These sites of reflection and action include advocating with and for racialized youth living in Toronto Community Housing neighborhood communities; creating safer spaces for Muslim girls and young women; building public awareness campaigns for racialized youth