Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 28/02) - Dr. Mahmoud Ibrahim and Reem Hamad are an ordinary couple.

They are young, professional, and educated. They have no children yet, but there's plenty of time for that. The world lies ahead of them.

They are also Muslim. No one has ever made that an issue with them, but they recognize the world has changed a lot in recent years.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001 have cast a dark cloud of suspicion over the Muslim world, much as the Second World War did for Japanese and German Canadian residents in North America, or for Russians after the Bolshevik revolution 85 years ago.

It will likely take some time and some understanding from the Western world before the dark cloud disappears, says Hamad.

"For Muslims, we have to try our best to let our voices be heard," says Hamad. "Through the media, or even just through friendship to other people just to explain to them the true Islam, because a lot of people just don't know."

Images of war-torn villages, angry mobs of men chanting anti-Western slogans, women hidden behind burkhas, seem as out of place in their living room as they would down at City Hall.

Ibrahim and Hamad are pleasant and polite. They offer tea, cookies and sliced cantaloupe before getting down to business -- to talk about coming to Canada, their relationship and their faith.

Hamad doesn't wear the scarf over her hair customary to her religion, but she may later on in life.

"I think it was required by the religion for Muslim women to wear a scarf," says Hamad. "It was not a male thing enforced on them, that's what the religion was asking them to do.

"It's also a personal thing. If you decided to do it, then you go ahead and do it. If you don't want to do it there's no problem."

Coming to Canada

Like many Muslims, Ibrahim and Hamad are new to Canada.

Neither of them might have even come to Yellowknife last year had they not met by chance at a dinner party between their two families in Cairo back in December 1994. Simply put, it was love that brought them here.

Hamad, age 28, is of Palestinian heritage. Ibrahim, 30, is Egyptian. A romance quickly blossomed and a month later the couple were engaged.

Ibrahim had just completed a degree in dentistry at the University of Cairo, while Hamad was visiting from Jordan where she was studying pharmacy.

The same year they were engaged, Hamad went with her family to Halifax. She decided to switch over to biology at Dalhousie University, and began looking into sponsoring Ibrahim to come to Canada.

"We had a long-distance relationship for four years," says Hamad. "I was suppose to go to Egypt after one year to either stay there or bring him back here. But after a year we decided no, he's better off coming here because I was back in university and found life was very good, better than Egypt."

Ibrahim came to Canada in June 1998. Less than a month later the couple married in Sydney, N.S.

Under Canadian Dental Association guidelines, Ibrahim would have to enlist in a qualifying program to practice dentistry in Canada. He had hoped while awaiting word of his acceptance into the program that he could go and practice in the NWT because it was the only jurisdiction in Canada at the time that allowed foreign dentists to obtain a temporary licence while awaiting the qualifying program.

"Unfortunately at this time it was over," says Ibrahim. "There wasn't anymore temporary licences."

The NWT had cancelled its temporary dental licensing program, so it was back to the books for Ibrahim. It was not all bad news, however. After several months in Canada, Ibrahim learned that he was one of eight out of 130 applicants to be accepted into Dalhousie's qualifying program.

Two years later, Ibrahim passed his final exam and Hamad finished her biology degree. The couple were now ready to settle into professional life. The thought of moving North had not left them, spurred on by rave reviews from a mutual acquaintance who did some locum work in Hay River.

"I always found positions available in the North," says Ibrahim, referring to hours spent leafing through the Journal of Canadian Dental Associations.

"Yellowknife, Iqaluit, Whitehorse, you know, so I said, 'OK, What about the North?' All these positions available there."

How times have changed

Ibrahim took a job at Adam Dental Clinic. Hadam found work at the Taiga Environmental Laboratory. She checks water samples for bacteria counts.

Despite apprehension from both sides of their families -- worries over the distance, the cold and long winters -- they adjusted quickly here.

"You can get anything here," says Hamad. "We even have some of our traditional foods here... goat meat, fava beans, couscous..."

They joined the Yellowknife Islamic Association, of which about 15 families belong. Through them, they found friendship and a place to worship. Ibrahim would later become the association's secretary, Hamad its treasurer.

The association strives to give itself a public face. They participate in multicultural dinners for the Stanton Territorial Hospital Foundation, they've raised money for war refugees in Kosovo.

When Sept. 11, 2001 hit, and news stations began inundating the public with stories of terrorist connections within the Muslim world, Yellowknife Catholic Schools asked the association to come to St. Patrick high school and talk about the Islamic faith.

"It's a religion of equality," says Hamad, who talked to a group of Grade 12 students. "Too many people think Islam a strict religion, and Muslim people are tough- minded and not open to anything, but it's totally, totally the opposite.

"Those extremists and fanatics are not. For us, we don't consider them Muslim, and they don't consider us true Muslims too, so we have two different points of view... In the Holy Qur'an you're not even allowed to swear against someone else's religion, or Gods, or abusing someone, and of course, killing someone."

The fallout from the U.S.-led war on terror seems far away in Yellowknife, where faces are friendly and familiar.

But they are not unaware of the problems facing other Muslims across North America.

"People in Yellowknife, maybe they understand," says Ibrahim. "Especially because most of them are immigrants here but I heard from some of my friends somewhere else in Canada and the United States it was really bad."

Now a war looms with Iraq. The Canadian government has been thus far ambiguous about its potential involvement in it. Hamad says she will feel bad if the Iraqi people have to endure another war.

"I was in Riyadh (capital of Saudia Arabia) during the Persian Gulf war," Hamad remembers. "I heard all the rockets and the bombing.

"It scares me to think how many people will die, children becoming orphans, people needing medication and not finding it."

On Nov. 6, Ramadan -- the ninth and holiest month on the Islamic calender -- begins. It will be marked by fasting, feasting and reverence to Mohammed, the father of Islam. Members of the Yellowknife Islamic Association will do their part.

Ibrahim and Hamad can only hope the month passes by in peace.

"Sometimes life is not fair," says Ibrahim. "We have to accept that."