Fatima

I'd like to say I was born Muslim, but babies don't have religion. All they know is that they are at the centre of the universe at all times. I suppose I became a Muslim the day my mom told 3-year-old-me that someday "we are all going to Allah's house" and to this day, I still believe it. I wear a hijab, I order coke at pubs when I'm out with non-Muslim friends or colleagues, and I try to (but usually don't) wake up early enough to do my Dawn (Fajr) prayers. I hold the door for strangers (or at least I did pre-Covid).

 I experience Islamophobia from strangers every once in a while - people in Toronto who stare at me, touch their head when they see me, middle finger me, or shout expletives. For reasons beyond my understanding, they are threatened by an innocent lady in a hijab (and sometimes a bike helmet). When I first started wearing a hijab it was really unsettling to me, although I got used to the stares. Thankfully, the insults and middle fingers only happen once every few months.

Sometimes people make assumptions about how I live my religion, which is also tough. A teacher once didn't shake my hand because he thought Muslim women don't do handshakes, even though I have shaken his hand multiple times in the past. Did anyone tell him Islam is not a monolith? That I am not a stereotype who considers a professional handshake a sexual act?

 But the racism that hurts the most is when people don't see me as Canadian. Many whites and non-whites treat me this way. People ask me where I am from and I say Toronto - because that was where I was born and where I grew up. I know no other home in my memory and my heart. Yet, they do not take Toronto for an answer. They want to hear about a place a multiple-hour flight away, where everyone else is my skin colour. I do not associate myself with such a place, a place which I have visited only twice in my life. Once I was asked, "How was your first winter?" I cannot answer that question, because there is little, I can remember about a winter that started a week after I was born. I am tired of telling people that I am Canadian. I am Torontonian and I am Canadian, no matter what anyone else says. No person can convince me otherwise.