"A brother could definitely get used to this," Suleiman Al-Aswad said, sighing happily as he lay in bed with Amman and Asma El-Senussi, the lovely couple that owns the Shawarma Paradise restaurant which he patronized frequently. Outside the El-Senussi household, a modest townhouse located in the heart of Nepean, Ontario, a fast-driving snow blanketed the lan...
Sitting inside the Carleton University library, Roger Etienne sighed deeply. When he opted to study in the South End of Ottawa, Province of Ontario, he didn’t know his life would get this complicated. Seriously. A lot of those complications had to do with Azeeza Balaam, his Somali girlfriend. Leaving the City of Boston, Massachusetts, was starting to feel li...
"Kader Abdullahi, if you think you can just waltz in here with your half-baked apologies for coming in two hours late, again, you can kiss my fat ass," Choukri Osman said sharply, and then she looked at her husband Kader up and down. Outside their house in the City of Barrhaven, Ontario, a fierce midsummer thunderstorm raged. Standing at the door soaking wet...
Fidelma Anne O'Leary, former Irish Catholic and Professor of Biology at Saint Edwards University in Texas made waves when she converted to Islam. The tall, blonde-haired and green-eyed Anglo-Saxon woman certainly didn't look like the Western world's conception of the average Muslim woman. And for a short while, the story of her awakening, her subsequent reje...
My name is Soraya Wahid, and I'm a Lebanese Christian woman living in the City of Ottawa, Province of Ontario. I was born and raised in the City of Baalbek in the Republic of Lebanon, but have lived in the Confederation of Canada for the past ten years. I'm five-foot-eleven, a bit chubby but still fit, with long Black hair, light bronze skin and light brown...
As Salam Alaikum, people. The name is Ahmed Rahman and I'm a brother with one hell of a story to share with you. It's not easy for me to admit this, especially given my Muslim background but here goes nothing. I am a bisexual man. I do it with girls and guys. There, I finally said it. Let the haters come if they will. I honestly don't care anymore. As a bla...
As a tall, handsome young Black man in the lily-white world of BDSM in the Canadian Capital, Kelvin Browne knew from the get-go that he definitely had to assert himself. Too many brothers in that universe allowed themselves to be pigeonholed as bulls, mindless sexual brutes who existed to bang White women in front of their overly excited, and sometimes close...
"Having a fascination with Sikh women is a bad habit for a Muslim man, especially one of African descent," cautioned my friend Sanjay Singh, the young Hindu guy I've known since first year at Algonquin College. We were both newcomers to the City of Ottawa, Ontario, and started school at the same time. In spite of our different backgrounds, we bonded. I've al...
The Kingdom of Hafizar, which is bordered by Kuwait to the north, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the South and is considered the smallest of the Gulf States, stands at the doorway of progress and peril. The Kingdom has a population of three million inhabitants, most of them centered in the three major cities, Al-Mokhtar, Behar and Thobar. Ninety percent of t...
When you think of a Somali Muslim woman, what is the first image that comes to mind? A Hijab-wearing, smiling gal from Africa, proud of her cultural heritage and Islamic faith. That's fine, because that's definitely part of who I am. Still, what happens when the Somali Muslim woman in question dares to question certain societal expectations and forge her own...