Artist's anti-Islamophobia web project aims to gather letters to Afzaal family

Three months from now, Muslims in London and across Canada will mark the one-year university of the killing of five members of the Afzaal family. 

Police have described the June 6, 2021, killing as a hate-motivated attack, one carried out against three generations of a visibly Muslim family out for a walk together on a sunny Sunday evening. 

The emotions that continue to come in response to that killing are raw, everything from anger to profound sorrow, guilt and disbelief. It's an entire range of emotions and Toronto artist Asim Hussain has created a place where they can all be shared, by anyone.

His website islamophobia.io is a place where stories can be shared in a bid to foster a cross-cultural understanding that he hopes will undermine the growth of anti-Muslim hate. 

"My focus is outreach and there has to be mechanisms for people to get to know each other. I think art is a beautiful bridge to help people meet each other," he said. 

The website, first launched in the days after the June 6 attack, is simple. 

Anyone, regardless of faith, can post their stories about Islamophobia to the site through a simple web form and read the posts of others who've done the same. The postings can be anonymous or include as much detail as the poster wants. The submissions can also be broken down into categories.

Hussain, who uses the name @StudentAsim for his professional work, also created a special letters of remembrance day for victims of the Jan. 29, 2017, Quebec City Mosque shootings. 

"This is a public opportunity to write public letters of remembrance for the Afzaal family," he said. "This is open to Canadians to coast-to-coast." 

Hussain said the format of his website works because it creates an anonymous, low-barrier way for anyone to post their story. The posts are screened for hate, but otherwise almost anything goes and those who post don't have to be followers of Islam. 

Hussain believes that sharing stories in an unfiltered, first-person form have the power to show nuanced details of the lived experiences of Muslims. He says this type of story sharing will challenge beliefs, and smash false perceptions about Muslims that — in their most extreme form — can result in hate-motivated violence. 

Many were shocked by the Jan. 29 and June 6 attacks but Hussain says they surfaced a hate that's long been familiar to himself and many Muslims.

"The Muslim community has known all along that this is a problem," he said. "I knew this was a problem when I was five years old and was called names, and when people got jumped just for being South Asian."

A dedicated section of the site for sharing memories and stories about the Afzaal family will go live on March 6, exactly three months from the one-year anniversary of their death.