In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

177 Samana Siddiqui Itrudged up the slushy steps of the city bus, flashed my pass at the driver, and proceeded on a quest for a seat to settle my weary, sixteen-year-old bones into. I was going to be late for school. Again. The next move I made changed me forever. It was winter 1991, during the Gulf War, and on this particular day, I was wearing a black hijab (headscarf). It wasn’t a political statement, this choice of black. Maybe I just threw it on because it was the first thing I could find. Or maybe it was because black was one of my favorite colors. Whatever the reason, I probably looked very, very “Muslim.” As I turned away from the bus driver and started walking down the aisle, the looks on people’s faces caught me off guard. Instead of the usual mild curiosity or obliviousness when they saw me, I could feel hostility in the air, like electricity during a lightning storm. One particular woman’s expression remains imprinted on my brain to this day: narrowed, angry eyes looking straight into mine. She frowned at me, offering me a hard, grim expression. As far as I recall, no one offered me a seat. I had gotten off pretty lightly during the Gulf War compared to other Muslims in Canada and the United States. No one crank-called my house, CSIS didn’t come to visit, I wasn’t beaten up in school, and no one pointed a gun at me or even taunted me. I don’t even think our phone was wired. 16 Taking the Bus to the World of Islamic Activism Samana Siddiqui 178 Taking the Bus to the World of Islamic Activism But the incident on the bus unnerved me. Why did people look at me so hatefully? I was normal, wasn’t I, a teenager catching the (late) bus to school? Did those who stared think I was going to blow up the bus or kill somebody? Did they think I was related to Saddam Hussein? “Perception is reality,” my first political science teacher taught me. In other words, a person’s perceptions become his/her understanding of reality. The incident on the bus made it very clear that some people’s perceptions about who Muslims are and what they represent had allowed them to assume that I was the “other” in this war of the “good guys” (Canada, the United States, NATO, etc.) versus Saddam Hussein. Stereotypes about Muslims as terrorists, among other things, aren’t new. But this was the first time I fully understood their repercussions. The media was reporting on the war in such a way that a line was clearly drawn between who “us” and “them” were. I was clearly the “them,” at least visually. The bus incident propelled me into what is called “Islamic activism.” It was the desire to stand up for my beliefs and make it clear that Islam is not what prevailing “wisdom” in the West says it is. No, I’m not a terrorist. No, Islam is not a murderous, violent religion bent on destroying and suppressing life, beauty, and the good. The vision behind my activism was simple: to clear up misunderstandings and refute lies against Islam. Creating a utopian Islamic society didn’t really come into the picture. How could we establish such a society when our beliefs and ideals were so misunderstood, sometimes even by Muslims? Although I do hope someday such a society will exist, I strongly doubt it will be in my lifetime. The transition from apathetic teenager to “activist” was sudden but seamless. I had no doubts about my need and desire to get involved in working for Islam within my capacity. It was something I had to do. My initial career goal had been to become a genetic engineer. But after taking chemistry, I never wanted to set foot in another lab again. Journalism, my second career choice, was fun and I loved to write. But after the incident on the bus, I realized that journalism could not simply become my cash cow. It had the power to transform perceptions and interpret reality. I was not going to sit by as these perceptions smeared my beliefs and obfuscated the truth. Journalism, for me, would be to present “just the facts ma’am” about Islam. The seeds of my activism were actually planted many years before this bus incident in different ways. One of them...

Share