Fall 2025 in Montreal — Canadian Council of Muslim Women

The Montreal chapter of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) has been actively engaged in community advocacy, social justice, and interfaith collaboration throughout the fall. Their efforts reflect CCMW’s ongoing commitment to advancing equity, inclusion, and the rights of Muslim women across Quebec.

August 24th

Farida Mohamed of CCMW Quebec chapter was invited to a press conference by the Centre for Research and Action on Race Relations (CRARR) concerning the Guiding Principles that the City of Montreal had drawn up and consequently had to vote on for final adoption.

Farida pointed out that while the City had listed many forms of discrimination that it intended to combat during the coming years, it made no mention of islamophobia and antisemitism as the two forms of discrimination linked to hate crimes that are most prominent in Montreal at

the moment. A city councillor of the Opposition, Sonny Moroz, brought this matter up in the City Council meeting on August 25-26, which then agreed to make amendments and name the types of discrimination against religious minorities.

August 27th

CRARR organized another press conference where Farida and other community members thanked the City councillors for their prompt response in amending the Guiding Principles of the City. Farida took the opportunity to ask that while the City of Montreal is committed to adopt Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in its policy, how could it implement such a policy when hijab-wearing Muslim women were being cut off from many employment sectors due to Bill 21 already in place and the present Bill 94 being debated in the National Assembly? Bill 94 goes further to prevent the hiring of personnel wearing religious symbols at all levels of the school system, which would include janitors, lunchtime supervisors, teachers’ aides, library volunteers and all types of personnel who may be in the presence of students. She pointed out that even though the grandfather clause is factored in to safeguard those visible Muslim women already employed in the education system, Bill 94 becomes problematic when new personnel has to be hired to replace retiring ones. The matter goes further since the Pelchat-Rousseau Commission, mandated by the Quebec government, seeks to ban all daycare workers from wearing religious symbols. Montreal has a large population of hijab-wearing women working in the daycare system. Farida pointed out that the female Muslim population seems to be the main target for discrimination and the laws that are being drawn up become a nuisance for Muslim women’s economic independence.

September 4th

CRARR invited members of different communities, as part of the initiative to stand Together Against Violence, to a meeting and reception with the McGill Rugby Team in order to garner interest among Montreal youth for the sport. The game was explained to us and we were treated to a match afterwards at the McGill Molson Stadium. The objective of the meeting was for the different racialized communities to gather youth aged between 12-20 so that they can go through a half-day of mentorship with the McGill Rugby Team members on October 4, 2025. Farida Mohamed brought this initiative to the Muslim secondary school Synergie and three students were recruited to participate in the activity of October 4.

Shaheen Ashraf has been helping a Pakistani girl with her career choice, who has gone on to study to be a dental assistant and who is also in the process of learning French. Shaheen has been a defendant of the Fairview Forest around her residential area and has been attending weekly protests, along with the Raging Grannies, against turning that green space into an industrial area.

Amira Elias met with the past and present presidents of the Islamic Community of Quebec (ICQ) in September in order to discuss the installation of an elevator at the ICQ mosque since many older women cannot climb the stairs to either attend daily prayers or to attend janazah funeral prayers. She is now helping that mosque to fundraise for that purpose.

September 19th

Farida Mohamed was once more invited by CRARR at City Hall of Montreal, along with other community leaders, to meet with Mrs. Maty Diop, the City of Montreal’s Commissioner for Fighting Racism and Discrimination. The topics raised were about the precocity and vulnerability of women not able to access certain services due to funding cuts, those who are more likely to experience hate due to their code of dress, online hate especially targeted at women in public office and among youth, implementation of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) as laid out in the City’s 2020-2030 Plan, discrimination in the housing sector since some landlords are reluctant to sign leases with racialized people, discrimination in high schools when members of the administration call the police to deal with Arab and Black students, anti-Asian and anti-Black racism, linguistic discrimination against anglophone communities in the health care system, in the legal system, in communication between the municipalities and the citizens.

Farida also talked about the Mayor’s silence regarding Bill 94 that seeks to reinforce Bill 21 in banning religious symbols from all personnel in schools and in daycares. She pointed out that the demography of Montreal is different from all other cities in Quebec due to its large population of immigrants and that a lot of visible Muslim women work in daycares. She asked how the City of Montreal intends to implement EDI and combat poverty if a sizeable part of its female population will not have access to jobs in certain sectors.

At City of Montreal Samaa Elibyari has been trying to have a dialogue with Minister Roberge, the Quebec minister of Immigration, Francization and Integration, minister of the French language and minister responsible for laicity (secularism) in Quebec. Both Minister Roberge and the Quebec Premier have stated that Islamization of Quebec is taking place and they have to deal severely with this issue.

CCMW is proud of the dedication, courage, and leadership shown by our Montreal chapter members. Their tireless advocacy and community engagement continue to embody the mission and values of CCMW -promoting equity, justice, and empowerment for Muslim women across Canada.