Documenting Our Story
If our community is to honor its history in Canada, we must also take practical steps to preserve it for future generations.
This work cannot be left to chance. It requires commitment, resources, and collective effort.
- Oral Histories: We must record the voices of our elders and pioneers, capturing the struggles and triumphs that shaped our communities.
- Community Archives: Mosques and organizations should preserve their records, photographs, and newsletters as part of a living memory.
- Partnerships with Institutions: We should collaborate with Canadian archives and museums to ensure Muslim stories are recognized as part of the national heritage.
- Youth Engagement: Young Muslims must be encouraged to participate through school projects, media production, and storytelling initiatives.
- Creative Narratives: Filmmakers, writers, and artists can bring these histories to life in documentaries, podcasts, and exhibitions.
At the same time, Muslims must not fall into the trap of thinking that a few Instagram reels or TikTok videos are truly capturing our history.
Social media is fleeting, often consumed in seconds and forgotten just as quickly. It can be a tool for awareness, but it is not a substitute for rigorous documentation, archiving, and research.
If we want our story in Canada to endure, we must invest in institutions, archives, and scholarship—not just hashtags and viral posts.
One shining example of this effort is the Muslim in Canada Archives (MiCA) at the University of Toronto, which has begun collecting and safeguarding materials that trace the presence and contributions of Muslims in Canada.
Their work is invaluable, but it needs the active support of community members who can share documents, photographs, and oral testimonies that otherwise risk being lost.
A Call to Action
Islamic History Month should therefore be more than a commemoration—it should be a call to action.
While it is comforting to recall the past achievements, our responsibility is to apply those lessons of excellence and creativity here and now.
History is not preserved in posters and exhibits —or in short-lived social media posts—it is written through the work we do, the values we embody, and the contributions we make to the societies we call home.
As Islamic History Month begins, let us honour the great civilizations of our past, but let us also recognize that Canadian Muslim history is equally worth telling.
And perhaps most importantly, let us remember that history is not simply about what happened—it is about what is happening.
Every mosque we build, every partnership we form, every act of service we extend—these are the pages of history our children will one day read.
This October, let us celebrate both where we came from and where we are going—and take the responsibility of documenting the story we are living right now.
Editor’s Note: The article was first published on Iqra.ca
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