What does it mean to be a Canadian Muslim? That is the question being asked by Imam Sikander Hashmi, the new — and first-ever — executive director of the Canadian Council of Imams.
Hashmi, 43, started in January in his new at the council, which is an independent organization founded in 1990 to support Canadian imams and Islamic religious leaders as spiritual and community leaders. The previously volunteer-led organization also seeks to engage governments and the media across the country on behalf of Canadian Muslims.
Born to parents who immigrated to Canada from Pakistan, Hashmi is well placed to answer questions about Canadian Muslim identity.
“I was very much a news junkie,” he said about growing up in Montreal and following the media.
“As a kid, I read newspapers and listened to the CBC to learn about Canada and the world. The media played a big role in informing who I am.”
He studied journalism at Concordia University and later interned at the Toronto Star. “I loved it,” he said of his time as a reporter.
But in 2009 he received a call from a mosque in Kingston, Ont., to become their imam. “I didn’t have a good reason to say no to [their] request for help,” said Hashmi, who also studied at an Islamic seminary in Cornwall, Ont. “I never wanted to be an imam. But God is the best planner.”
While in Kingston, Hashmi had plenty of experience dealing with the media due to the so-called honour killings of four individuals by a Muslim couple and their son in that community.
As a Muslim community leader, Hashmi was called on to explain that murder is condemned in Islam, and that honour is no justification for violence.
“I learned how to deal with the media,” he said of that time. “I came to understand that I was representing the whole community.”
Hashmi served in Kingston until 2014, before being asked to be the imam at a new mosque in Ottawa. While there, he had to once again deal with the media following the attack that year on Parliament Hill by a man who cited his Muslim beliefs as justification for his actions.
“Whenever anything happened involving Islam, I was the guy the media called,” he said.
‘A work in progress’
In his new role at the Canadian Council of Imams, Hashmi wants to help build a Canadian Muslim identity, something he thinks could take a generation or two. “It’s a work in progress,” he said.
Muslim youth in Canada want to be known as Canadians, while still respecting the heritage and cultures of their parents and grandparents, he says. But, he added, “they don’t want to be religious the same way their parents were back home.”
Parents who try to enforce rules and religious practices that worked in their former countries “very quickly learn that approach doesn’t work,” he said.
“There is a huge disconnect between parents and mosque leaders and children if they push the old ways,” said Hashmi, who is himself the married father of two teenagers.
Hashmi thinks he is in a unique position to help build that Canadian Muslim identity.
“Being born in Canada helps,” he said. “I understand the culture better than someone from another country. I know how Canadians think, I understand the subtle things about being Canadian. That is an advantage for me.”
He also wants to help Muslim leaders in Canada do a better job of engaging the public through the media.
“[Muslim leaders] don’t understand how the media works, they think it is only about bad news,” he said. “They are afraid of being misquoted and misrepresented.”
As for his message to Canadians, Hashmi hopes they realize that Muslims — just like others in this country — want to contribute to the betterment of Canada.
“I believe we all need to work together, get to know each other better, to share in the challenges and also the solutions for our country,” he said.
The silent scourge is upon us!
They tried a French style of islam in France and it failed miserably.
Where is murder condemned in the Qur’an, Hadith or Sira?