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This article presents an interview with Zarqa Nawaz. Born in Liverpool, raised in Toronto and now living in Regina with her husband and four children, Zarqa has worked as a freelance writer/broadcaster with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio, and in various capacities with CBC "Newsworld", CTV's Canada AM, and CBC's "The National". Her radio documentary "The changing rituals of death" won first prize in the Radio Long Documentary category and the Chairman's Award in Radio Production at the Ontario Telefest Awards. In 2005, Nawaz's documentary entitled "Me and the mosque", a co-production with the National Film Board and the CBC, was broadcast on CBC's Rough Cuts. Zarqa is creator of Little mosque on the prairie--an award-winning series that explores the dynamics of Muslim and non-Muslim relationships with a comedic twist. She has been recently named one of the "ten young visionaries shaping Islam in America" by Islamica Magazine and is a recipient of the Outstanding International Achievement Awards, presented by Women In Film and Television--Toronto.

This article presents an interview with Jamelie Hassan. Jamelie Hassan is a visual artist and activist based in London, Ontario, Canada. Since the 1970s she has exhibited widely in Canada and internationally. In 1993 she was presented the "Canada 125 Medal" in recognition of her outstanding service to the community, and in 2001 she received the Governor General's Award in Visual Arts. She was awarded the Chalmers Art Fellowship in 2006.

Transnationalism and the experience of migrancy has lead to cultural dissonance for many newcomers from Muslim countries, unaccustomed to the culturally permissive social norms like consuming alcohol and partying, dating and premarital relations. Residing within culturally incongruent spaces, migrant Muslim communities often seek to shelter their children and youth from negative outside influences. Within this context, independent Islamic schools take on multiple sociological roles in the Canadian Muslim diaspora. For example, these schools attempt to create a "safe" environment that protects students from the "de-Islamizing" forces in public schools and society at large. It is within the nexus of resisting cultural assimilation and engaging cultural survival that the need for Islamic schools emerges. These schools provide a culturally congruent space and a more seamless transition between the values, beliefs, and practices of the home and school environment. They also provide a space free from racism and religious discrimination that many students encounter within public schools. Yet Islamic schools, like other independent religious schools, are also accused of "ghettoizing" students and not providing socialization within society at large, and are considered inadequate arenas for civic engagement in a racially and religiously plural society due to their "particularist" orientation. This paper provides a critical examination of these claims and how they are both challenged and affirmed through the narratives of Islamic school stakeholders. (Contains 4 notes.)

The practice of veiling has made Muslim women subject to dual oppressions--racism and Islamophobia--in society at large and patriarchal oppression and sexism from within their communities. Based on a narrative analysis of the politics of veiling in schools and society, the voices of young Muslim women attending a Canadian Islamic school speak to the contested notion of gender identity in Islam. The narratives situate their various articulations of Islamic womanhood in ways that both affirm and challenge traditional religious notions. At the same time they also are subject to Orientalist representations of veiled and burqa clad women that represent them as oppressed and backward. Focusing on ethnographic accounts of veiling among Muslims girls who attended a gender-segregated Islamic high school in Toronto, this discussion allows a deeper understanding of how gendered religious identities are constructed in the schooling experiences of these Muslim youth. (Contains 11 notes.)

An ethnographic analysis of the schooling experiences of Muslim youth in Canada who are committed to maintaining Islamic lifestyles despite pressures to conform to the dominant culture, this article discusses how religious identity intersects with other forms of social difference (e.g., race and gender) in school experiences. Presents a case study of 10 Muslim students and their parents to illustrate this issue. (SM)

This paper explores the ways in which Muslim girls construct notions of gender and religious identity within and against the dominant patriarchal discourses promoted in Islamic schools. At the same time, the investigation locates the negotiation of school-based socialization within a larger context of Islamophobia in Canada. As such, the analysis provides an ethnographic analysis of Islamic schools as sites for the construction of gendered Islamic identities and sensibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper problematises the politics of inclusion in education by examining how minority groups in Toronto attempt to 'negotiate equity' in response to the school board's release of a draft policy on anti-racism and ethno-cultural equity in education. A competing policy document challenging the specific focus on race, ethnicity and faith communities as being 'too narrow' argued that the notion of equity should be broadly construed to accommodate the categories of other 'historically disadvantaged groups', such as women, the disabled and gays and lesbians, under a single comprehensive policy. A debate over the implications of broad-based equity has polarized communities along racial, ethnic and religious lines. Religious and ethnic communities objected to the displacement of race, ethnicity and religion and what they regarded as the centring of sexual orientation in a policy which would integrate gay and lesbian issues into the curriculum. Advocates for separate policies argued that all forms of difference could not be equated and should be dealt with separately in terms of policy and practice. This paper will explore the dynamics of community engagement with this issue and will examine the politics behind the shifting discourse of anti-racism toward the paradigm of broad-based equity through political and discursive practices at both the community and institutional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]