The blast that was the MSA Banquet

by Tazeen Siddiqui

Celebrating Eid a full month after the fact, more than 200 party-goers attended the MSA Banquet for a night of good food, good people and good times.

The night got underway with an awe-inspiring welcome speech delivered by our fearless commander-in-chief, Shuaib Ally, followed up by a speech from Hamza Karamali. The talk on community involvement was interspersed with threats that dinner would be delayed by 2 hours. Panic struck the hearts of all in attendance, but mercifully, it did not actually go on for 2 hours, and ended with a delightful tale about orangutans (I kid you not) before we moved into the entertainment portion of the evening.

The first movie featured the cream of the MSA crop skillfully answering baffling questions, such as “What is the capital of Ontario?” and “What is your favourite tv show?” Dinner came next and was followed up with the highlight of the banquet: imported entertainment. Unable to rummage up our own homegrown talent, we cleverly decided to outsource and recruit Mac MSA members for the daunting task of keeping UofT MSA-ers thoroughly amused. The comedic stylings of Omair Rahman and Hamzah Moin (aka “Maniac Muslim”) left the masses in fits of laughter.

The second —and last— video featured a rousing rendition of “Yusuf”—a distorted twist on “Aicha”— by Foblandish and made it evident that UofT is in fact able to muster up some talent. The Oscar-esque thank you speech that followed unfortunately left out some names as applause slowly drowned out Foblandish…

Putting our own twist on the age-old Raffle, the Banquet organizer, Fadia Bahgat rhyming off ticket numbers from the top of her head for the prize-giveaway that capped off the evening. Oh, and T-shirt throwing.

Enjoy the visuals…

What did you think of the Interfaith Dialogue?

On Thursday, November 30, the MSA joined Campus for Christ in an Interfaith Dialogue, seeking to promote dialogue and understanding between Muslims and Christians. The event featured Shabir Ally and Tony Costa, who answered questions about the essentials of their respective faiths, and Sawitri Mardyani and Valera Strugov, who talked about their religious experience as students. This was followed by a lively and at times heated question and answer session.

The event was, Alhamdulillah, a success. About 120 people attended, both Muslims and Christians alike. Many stayed behind afterwards to chat with the speakers and other attendees. Some commented that we need to do more to better understand each other, and that similar interfaith events should be planned in the future. What do you think?

How lucky we are to be sisters!

by Tazeen Siddiqui

The MSA & TMA Sisters’ Eid Celebration was held on Thursday, November 2nd in the Arbour Room of Hart House, when 40 sisters gathered together to celebrate Eid with games, food, gifts, and henna! I arrived promptly at 5:45pm for the 5:00pm event (Paki Standard Time in full effect). The fun was waiting for me to begin!

After a quick round of intros and finding out the sisters’ guilty pleasures, we were treated to a wonderful speech on great women in Islam. It was then time to raid the food. Oh the food!!! This starving student will eat just about anything, but GOOD food is always a welcomed surprise. And yes, there was indeed free cake.

Can you quit with the pictures and bring us our food before our plastered smiles wear off!

How very happy we are to be here – Part I

How very happy we are to be here – Part II

Great food, great company – what’s not to love about the MSA?

With henna-ness running in the background, sisters ate and chatted, laughing all their university worries away. But then it was time for some real fun. Out came the games and prizes!

Henna artists at work

Some sort of game, apparently

Another sort of game, apparently

Not realising there was a colour theme to the evening, I began to question why so many sisters were wearing pink. Turns out that all those who had dressed in pink and/or purple received roses, as did at least one non-pink/purple-wearer whose confusion earned her enough pity to warrant an un-warranted rose. The evening ended with a gift exchange and some Spongebob Squarepants pinata fun!

Roses for the brave souls in pink and purple

Spongebob’s Angels!

Exchanging gifts

The joyful bunch

This year’s event was a blast! Thank you to all the volunteers and the awesome sisters who attended. To get involved in Sisters’ Events and help make the rest of the year’s events equally as fun, if not more, please email msa.exec@utoronto.ca.

One final picture to cherish the memories

Eid at Eva’s Phoenix

by Aasim Hasany

On Thursday, October 26, as part of a Community Affairs initiative, six Muslim students from UofT (5 brown guys and 1 token Arab) took their Eid celebrations to Eva’s Phoenix youth shelter (11 Ordnance road, near Bathurst and King streets). The ride to the shelter from campus was a memorable, albeit slightly uncomfortable, one as six young adults squeezed into a tiny Toyota Corrola steered by the world’s safest driver, Aasim Hasany. After arriving at 6.30pm wtih all joints intact, the six MSA’ers prayed their evening prayers along with Moussa, a staff member at Eva’s and Ali, a resident at the shelter. Following evening prayers, they were invited to share their experiences during Ramadan and Eid and explain the nature of the entire phenomenon of fasting (summarized quite expressively as ‘no eating, drinking, or hankypankying’). The discussion was primarily spearheaded by the MSA president, Shuaib Ally, who was later asked to sign autographs for his excellent presentation (joke).

Following the chit-chat was a fine traditional Arab dinner with chicken, rice, hummus, and the works, prepared wonderfully by Somethin’ 2 Talk About. The evening was drawn to an end with an award presented to the MSA for their involvement in and support of youth issues in the Greater Toronto Area.

To get involved in more initiatives such as these, please contact the MSA Community Affairs Coordinator at msa_comm@yahoo.ca.

Marhaba dinner minus the visuals

by Asmaa Hussein 

After the smoke cleared, the rubble was settled, and the MSA president was finally back in his seat following his painful speech*, we realized that the event was going quite well!

Although it started late, which is inexcusable, the MSA made up for it by inviting Dr. Yahya Fadlalla to give a wonderful and motivational speech on the love of Jannah. The speaker was the highlight of the evening with his warm stories of the Sahaba (companions of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him) and his passionate message to the attendees.

Despite the fact that students were slowly filing in throughout the evening, we eventually had a full house of about 210 people and had to turn people away at the door! Just a note to those who would like to attend future events, show up on time or there may not be enough seats left!

After dinner, the recepients of the MSA’s ICNA-Relief scholarships were announced and given their cheques for $1500 each, which undoubtably made them quite happy.

The evening ended with a live nasheed performance and MSA jeopardy, brothers vs. sisters. In an unforseen turn of events, the brothers actually won. So kudos to them for not getting whipped by the sisters.

When it comes down to it, Alhamdulillah and thank you to everyone who made this evening memorable! And the food was good, too! (Although this writer would have been more satisfied if there was some chocolate cake after dinner, but baqlava will do.)

* Please note that Shuaib Ally’s speech was not painful. It was tolerable, I suppose.

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If you have any pictures that you would like to submit to make this post more visually appealing and aesthetically pleasing, please email them to msa.exec @ utoronto.ca and we’ll be sure to put them up here.

A review of the orientation

by Hajera Khaja 

Once upon a time last Friday, there was a very cool student club at UofT, called the MSA, short for Muslim Students’ Association, that held its first ever orientation to welcome new students and to introduce them to the coolness that was the MSA. The frosh that came to know of this auspicious event were very excited and went traipsing off to tell all their friends and foes about it. As the days passed on, they gathered in huge numbers, flooding the MSA exec with lots of emails about their excitement and willingness to register and partake in the day’s activities. Their nights passed with much difficulty and they couldn’t wait for the day to come when they would be finally bestowed with the title of ‘MSA member’ and got to meet all the older MSA members.

Although the waiting seemed long and endless, last Friday finally did arrive, trailed by clear blue skies and sunny rays shining down upon the frosh. They started the morning early with presentations by the MSA President, Student Affairs and the Student Administrative Council. By the end of the session, the frosh were left amazed and speechless at all the wonderful ways they could get involved and thanked their lucky stars that they chose to attend UofT and not York. Next on the agenda was a tour of every cool place imaginable on campus – except that it wasn’t really a tour, but a scavenger hunt that had the frosh running around campus trying to find answers to mundane questions such as the number of stalls in the washrooms near the prayer space in the Bahen Center. And to the end the fabulous day, the 60 something frosh that registered met with the 200 something MSA members at the big barbeque at the SAC Lawn and shared many laughs, advice and wisdom over burgers and free popcorn and cotton candy.

Having been initiated into the MSA and crowned new MSA members, the frosh and all their peers who were a part of the orientation lived happily ever after. Except for the author of this fairy tale who wondered what sort of feedback the frosh would give if they were asked to comment on the day’s events and activities. The End.

——

 

Waiting for the food.

 

Asmaa, making a beeline for the frosh to sign them up.

 

Frosh forging friendships

 

Aasim: Man, this is hard work!

 

No room for the sisters!

 

Who knows how to operate the cotton candy machine?

 

Asim, the extraordinaire does!

 

Look at him go!

 

All fed and happy

 

Cleaning up, and Ilyas finally decides to help

 

… and makes sure he’s rewarded for it

Clubs Day – How it all went down

by Hajera Khaja 

The numbers haven’t come in yet, but the good news is, we got a truckload of new MSA members. If you are one of those brilliant individuals who decided to befriend the MSA for the transient (or not) time that you will spend at UofT, welcome aboard! I am certain that you will not regret the decision, even when you find yourself awake at 3am designing a flyer for an event whilst simultaneously trying to memorize a long list of organic chemical reactions for your quiz the next morning at 9:10 A.M. Trust me, it will all be worth it come the day after the event, when you run into numerous people that attended your event, congratulating you on a job well done and exclaiming what a fine time they had, and when you run into not-so-numerous people who were unable to make your event but heard such wonderful things about it, that they felt compelled to approach you and insist that you hold a sequel so they can partake in the grandiose fun that the gossip mills of the MSA were loudly proclaiming.

On a slightly more serious (i.e. official) note, the MSA has lots to offer you. We have eight committees, all striving to offer diverse and numerous ways in which you can involve yourself and enhance your university experience. You can keep informed of the myriad volunteer opportunities available via our listserv, fondly known as the MSA-L (If you failed to sign up for it, drop us an email at msa.exec@utoronto.ca). For the more ambitious amongst you, jump right in and head one of our various projects. We will be forever indebted to you and your enthusiasm.

Whatever your forte, we welcome you with outstreched arms and hope that you get involved, and have a pleasant undergraduate (or graduate) journey. And you can kick things off by attending the MSA Orientation, specifically designed for all those who are new to the MSA, frosh or otherwise. It may be the best and most fun you will have this year, so be sure to register by emailing msaorientation2006@yahoo.ca. To give you a sneak peek of what we have in store for you, think ice-breaker games, literally. I will leave the rest upto your creative imaginations.

And now, to the bad news. Although, I am hesitant to categorize it as ‘bad news’ but alas, a wind-swept tent making straight for our Sisters’ Events Coordinator, Israh Enaz, can’t be anything but bad news. But we are thankful to report that there were no injuries involved in the unfortunate incident.

Now its your turn – let the commenting begin! Let us know what you thought of the MSA table, the displays, the execs manning the displays, or anything else that you wish to comment on. If you thought it was all fabulous and felt we had reached the pinnacle of our existence, then let us know. And if you thought that we were the shabbiest looking table around and struck a new low, let us know as well. We promise to take both comments with a grain of salt.

 

Clubs Day: A Visual

Look at that crowd!

 

Did you enter the draw?

 

All that traffic at the MSA table?! Surely, we must have rocked.

 

Asim and Israh, one looking dazed, and the other confused.

 

Tariq, eyeing Nasir suspiciously: “What could he possibly want with all those flyers?”

 

MSA veterans (from left to right): Akram, Faraz (former MSA exec members) and Mr. “why in the world are you taking my picture?” President.

 

A little too much MSA Pride, me thinks.

 

Asmaa, wanting to spread some peace.

 

The tent mishap – So how many guys does it take to hold down a tent? Apparently more than four, for it went flying away soon after they left.