Last week at the Daniels Spectrum, Sama, Tracy and Nashat wrapped up their final interview with Hina Mir, a Muslim girl with ties to Masjidur Rahmah who had experienced displacement in Regent Park. With the completion of their interviews, the group moved on to editing the documentary and preparing an outline for their final research paper. Here are some of the goals, findings and conclusions that the group has come to in preparation for their final submission.
The Goal of Our Documentary:
The goal of our documentary is to amplify the voices of members of the Regent Park Community with leadership roles in various Mosques in the neighbourhood as well as Muslim tenants with ties to these Mosques to shed light on their experiences with displacement in the community. While our questions for those in leadership roles focused mainly on the impact of the revitalization project and displacement in the neighbourhood on their Mosque’s ability to support tenants, our interview with Muslim tenants with ties to these spaces of worship focused on how displacement impacted their relationship with their faith.
Final 3 Research Questions:
In what ways has the revitalization of Regent Park impacted Mosques in the neighbourhood?
How do Mosques in Regent Park support tenants amidst displacement?
How do relationships between Muslim tenants and faith shift amidst displacement?
Main Key findings from our Interviews:
While some tenants continued to attend Masjid Omar Bin Khatab even after being displaced, others were forced to find new places of worship in the community such as Masjid Toronto (Dundas and Adelaide locations) which is a prominent mosque in Downtown Toronto connecting to the broader theme of the Downtown East identity. For some, however, the displacement meant the complete erosion of the community they built.
The displacement of well revered scholars in the community led to the declining demographic of youth in the mosque. While moral, mental, spiritual and communal support is often facilitated by scholars in the community, the redevelopment seems to have led to the loss of these support systems for the youth in Regent Park.
With displacement, tenants have reported that they began to view holding on to faith as an individual responsibility rather than a responsibility which was supported by the community.
City planners should continue investing in infrastructure for existing Mosques in the neighbourhood and create room for more to meet the needs of the community, abandoning a secular mindset when it comes to planning.
What we want to argue:
Although amidst the revitalization of Regent Park Mosques continue to provide tenants with religious, mental and social support, displacement placed a hindrance on the relationship between Muslim youth in the neighbourhood, their ties to these Mosques and altered how they perceive connecting with their faith.
Documentary Outline and Troubleshooting
After gathering all the interviews we discussed it over, our group decided that we wanted our interview with Hina Mir to speak in the documentary first, followed by the Imam from Masjidur Rahmah, the volunteer Omar Bin Khatab and lastly the interview with Maruf.
Throughout the editing process while Tracy was rearranging clips she edited beforehand, she came across an issue with some of the clips being randomly deleted which sent her into panic mode and required her to take the day off to come back to editing. She later found out the next day that it was due to the temporary keyboard she was using as well as having too many clips and markers on one timeline. Thankfully, she was able to work around it, got the issue resolved, and continued editing the rough draft of the documentary.
The team members of Resilience and Faith are Tracy Ikpekhia, Sama Abbas and Nashat Nawar.