My name is Azhar Qadir and I understand that what I'm about to share with you is definitely shocking. Especially coming from a man who was born and raised in Amman, the biggest City in the Capital Region of the Kingdom of Jordan. I have lived in the Confederation of Canada for almost twenty years now. I moved to North America with my parents when I was much younger. The City of Ottawa, Ontario, is the place I have long called home. I graduated from All Saints Academy in 1999 and earned my bachelor's degree in business administration from Carleton University in 2004. I am currently pursuing a Master's degree in business at the University of Ottawa. Going back to school in 2011 after such a long hiatus hasn't been easy. I tried my hand at a career in the military and discovered it wasn't for me. Fortunately, something good came out of it.
It's at the University of Ottawa that I met the lovely Tahirah Simah Ibrahim, the young Saudi Arabian woman I am currently engaged to. Tahirah is a rebel in every sense of the word. I ran into her at the Persian Students Association. There are many Algerian, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian and Albanian students at the University of Ottawa. The school officials lump us all together as 'the Arab students'. One of my classmates invited me and I came to one meeting, mostly because I wanted him to stop bugging me about it. I've never really been religious, nor do I associate with people of the Muslim faith for the most part. I've become somewhat of an atheist after living in the Province of Ontario for so long. I've grown disgusted with religion altogether. Doesn't matter if you are Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist or Muslim. I think all religion is a load of crock. That's what I said to my Muslim brothers and sisters at the P.S.A. meeting and I guess that turned a few heads.
I knew some of these Muslim students would be mad at me. They haven't seen what I have seen. I spent years and years first in Iraq then Afghanistan as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. I served beside American soldiers and experienced firsthand the distrust that both Canadian and American officers have for any man or woman from the Muslim world. It didn't matter to them that I barely remembered living in Amman, the capital of Jordan. My father is a tailor in Ottawa and my mother is a book store clerk. We're not rich people. They're religious, I'm not. I joined the Canadian Armed Forces because I felt moved to participate in the defence of North America after the September 11 Attack on New York City.
I have always felt that North America is the land of opportunity. While attending Carleton University, I spent one semester at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. I was fond of America. Yet that didn't seem to matter to American guys and Canadian guys who saw me as an Arab first and a Canadian citizen second. Such a pity, because my sole allegiance is to the Confederation of Canada. These bigots forever darkened my view of the world. Don't even get me started on the many Canadian citizens of Arabic descent who called me a traitor to Allah because I wore the Canadian Armed Forces uniform. I learned that you can't please the world. You can only be yourself.
All this I shared with the men and women of the Persian Students Association of the University of Ottawa. I wanted them to know why I had lost faith not just in our religion but also in the tenets that Americans and Canadians claimed to live by. After that first meeting, I expected to become persona non grata with the Muslim students of the University of Ottawa. I was half right. I got confronted by Tahirah Simah. This tall, curvy and big-bottomed young Persian woman hailed from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She had been living in Canada for most of her life. Her parents were divorced. She was a member of the school's women's rugby club. She had the unique distinction of being a member of both the Persian Students Association and the Feminists of Ottawa. I would have thought that one couldn't be a member of both organizations but I guess she proved me wrong.
