Understanding Syria

An intense conflict; friends and foes fighting side-by-side
Rahman Mohamed
Updated April 9, 2017

Today when a someone hear’s “Syria” they often think of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and Levant), or DAESH (Arabic acronym for ISIS).  What’s commonly misunderstood is the complications of the conflict in Syria.  Today conflict in Syria is made up of civil war, war against terrorism, and proxy wars that are evolving into direct war involving nations outside of Syria. Continue reading

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Discrimination: Alive in 21st Century North America

More than ever before
Rahman Mohamed
Updated 5 March 2017

Prejudice: judgement based on a single aspect; considering someone to act and behave in a certain way because of a certain quality. Discrimination: dividing a group of people into multiple groups using prejudice.  Ableism: creating an us and them using disability, a prejudgement of persons with disability second-class to “normal” people or people without a visible disability is a relatively new form of discrimination.  North America has battled discrimination since the landing of the Europeans.  Aboriginals, Indigenous persons, Inuit, and others were classified as second-class.  Although it as made strong gains in attempts to silence discrimination it is still alive in North America, both within society and among social leaders in Canada and United States. Continue reading

Funds for Syria: Many Matches

Rahman Mohamed
The growing fundraising and assistance for refugees from

In 2014 the Assyrian Chaldean Syriac Student Union (ACSSU), a student organization with branches at McMaster, York, Ryerson and Brock Universities, ran a movement entitled “Life of a Mesopotamian Refugee” to raise funds for refugees from Syria and Iraq by mimicking the life of a refugee for a week.  Today Europe is facing a Syrian refugee crisis as Syrians flee a country with multiple civil wars including the rebellion against dictating leader Bashar al-Assad and growing Islamic State (IS) or ISIL (Islamic State in Levant), seeking asylum in Europe.  Many have called this the greatest number since World War 2.

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