My name is Nashat Nawar and I am currently a third-year student enrolled in the course “URB440: The Changing Culture of Regent Part” at the University of Toronto (UofT) St. George Campus, conducting research with other students in the Resilience and Faith group. My teammates are 3rd year student Sama Abbas and OCAD student/Regent Park resident Tracey Ikpekhia, and this week at Daniel's Spectrum we began consolidating the research questions for our documentary and research project on the topic of Faith and Resilience.
First off, I'd like to share some of our reasons for focusing our project on the topic of Faith. With distant relatives in the neighbourhood, I was always aware of the prominent Bangladeshi-Muslim identity in Regent Park. However, growing up in North York, I felt that apart from times of religious celebrations such as Ramadan and Eid, I often did not see Bangladeshis who were proud of being Muslims. Thus, when I got to meet some of the Muslim Regent Park residents in our class such as Sumayya and other Muslims in the Daniel’s Spectrum Lobby, I was really fascinated to know that Bangladeshi community in Regent Park views their cultural identity as inextricably linked with their Muslim identity. Knowing that Islam plays an important role in the lives of many in the region encompassing a complete code of life, I was interested to know how different faiths played a role in navigating hardship in the community.
Additionally, here are some quotes from my teammates Sama and Tracey on the matter:
“In Regent Park, something clearly noticeable about the Muslim community is their ability to battle and overcome stigmatization by finding strength through faith.”
“Resilience is essentially the ability to bounce back from hardship, and oftentimes we see that what strengthens people at their lowest points is their connection to their faith. It would be really interesting to see how different faith groups are able to navigate personal challenges in the neighbourhood through their faith.”
While our group was off to a good start, the question then became, how do we define resilience? Each of us had our own respective ways of going about the topic, so we decided to chat with Professor Mehta in order to arrive at a specific research question that we all found interesting, which also tied into issues related to urban planning. Focusing on the issue of tenant displacement, we aim to examine how religious leaders and institutions in Regent Park act as a source of support amidst the crisis of tenant displacement, how tenants rely on religious institutions to cope with displacement and how relationships between tenants and religious leaders/institutions shift amidst displacement.
In addressing these questions, we hope to interview religious leaders and tenants in a Church, Mosque and Temple on the matter. For our next step, we plan on contacting Masjidur Rahmah, a Bengali Mosque in the area, to start our interview process. Overall, our team is really excited about the project thus far, and can’t wait to share our findings as well as how we plan to overcome changes as we progress!
For a deeper dive into our rundown of the week, please listen to our podcast episode.
The team members of Resilience and Faith are Tracy Ikpekhia, Sama Abbas and Nashat Nawar.