Mohammed Saleem and his sons Omar and Bilal. Bilal felt the photo would be better with his tongue out. Chelby Daigle

22
Feb

2015

What Does Family Mean To You? Mohammed Saleem and Sons

Written by Muslims of Ottawa

Published in Stories

Muslim Link attended MAC’s Canadian Family Day event on February 16 and asked people: What Does Family Mean To You? Mohammed Saleem, principal of Abraar School, spoke about family with his eldest son Omar, 13, and his youngest son Bilal, 4.

Mohamed: Family is loving someone and being loved by someone. Sharing the same values…to a certain extent at least. Living similar dreams and sometimes even nightmares. Living life together, this is part of having family. When you are an immigrant, your extended family gets replaced by the community you are living in. You start forging new relationships so your neighbour, the people you work with on a daily basis, start taking on many roles that your extended family used to take on when you were surrounded by them.

Omar: Family is there to support you. They are there for you if you fall into dark times.

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Muslims of Ottawa

Muslims of Ottawa is a photographic representation of the diversity and humanity of our community. The project is two-fold: (1) We want to share and document the broad array of cultures, lifestyles, professions and other defining features of Muslims in Ottawa and (2) we want to hear from members of the community in their own words. This project originally began as a partnership between Muslim Link and abcreatives, who took 20 photos of Muslims in Ottawa. Muslim Link is now continuing the project which takes its inspiration primarily from Humans of New York, but is also influenced by loveOttawa and Somali Sideways.