Activities by CCMW Montreal in April 2021

CCMW Montreal has been quite active in funding, shopping for and preparing Ramadan food baskets during the month of April and got them delivered to 36 needy families. We were very happy to get help of some young girls for the packing of the baskets. 

A local charitable organization, called Centre des Femmes Interculturel Claire, got in touch with the president of CCMW Montreal to ask if the two organizations could work together in the future in order to help women and families in need.

Amira Elias, the vice-president of CCMW Montreal, gave a small webinar on April 9th to talk about the role of the heart in helping a person to live his/her best life. She quoted many verses of the Qu’ran in which the heart is defined as being more than an organ pumping blood to the rest of the body. "How to have an open heart to manifest your best life.”

Amira is also going to give a webinar on Taqwa (God consciousness) on May 1st in shaa Allah that will be available to all interested.

Samaa Elibyari organized and facilitated a webinar on how Artificial Intelligence programs (bots) can be used to detect and repel hateful messages on Twitter. The guest speaker on the subject was Lana Cuthbertson, CEO of Areto Labs.

Farida Mohamed, the president, was invited to speak in two press conferences organized by city councillor Marvin Rotrand and supported by the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR). The councillor has put forward a motion to set up an effective Hate Crime Unit within the Police Services of Montreal to deal with rising hate against Asian, Muslim, Jewish and Black communities. She also gave a telephone interview on April 15th for the local radio station CPAM 1410 to state her opinion about whether the pandemic is responsible for much of the police’s inability to proceed with their action plan. She also talked about the harmful effects of Bill 21 on Muslim women living in Quebec.

Farida Mohamed participated in Advocacy Day organized by the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) on March 29th, whose focus was to speak up against the inequal treatment of Canadian Muslim humanitarian organizations by the Canada Revenue Agency, which may review them more harshly than other faith-based charitable organizations. Federal ministers or their secretaries were available to hear the questions and comments by many Muslim organizations.

Shaheen Junaid gave an interview on CTV concerning the recent attacks on a mosque based in the east end of Montreal. The attack proved that islamophobia is still rearing its ugly head in Quebec. Sania Malik and Nusrat Shimul are our two representatives who have met up with Firdaus Ali, the organizer of the D.A.R.E. 2 project.