“The Digital Sisterhood”, a platform that brings together Muslim women of color

Since the launch of the TDS Podcast, other products including a book and an app have been created, and the TDS Podcast has become the top spiritual podcast in many markets in the UK, Australia and Sweden. TDS recently launched its Discord server with over 1000 members.

“The Star”, in its report on “Digital Sisterhood”, writes: “When Cadar Mohammad, a 28-year-old black Muslim woman from Toronto, visited Vancouver two years ago, she was treated like a foreign. People seeing her hijab, thought she was Arab, when she was Canadian”.

This experience, the murder of George Floyd, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict led Cadar to launch “The Digital Sisterhood” which is a place for artistic expression, virtual encounters, and the telling of their valuable life stories and experiences.

The platform is run by a team of 9 black Muslim women from different professions, writers, graphic designers, web developers, small business owners and filmmakers from the cities of Toronto and Ottawa in Canada, Minneapolis in the United States and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

Muna Sckeomar, a 25-year-old filmmaker from Minneapolis, connected with Cadar Mohammad in January 2021 via Instagram.

Sckeomar said: “There is a lot of frustration and injustice, in the lives of black people and Muslims… I felt like I was suffocating because of what happened to George Floyd, it was a living experience of the ongoing racism that people have… This person was literally suffocated because their life was of no value to anyone. I said to myself, I am black and Muslim”.

Sckeomar is CEO of “Beautiful Light Studios”, the company that produces “The Digital Sisterhood” podcast, launched in April 2021, which is heard in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Nova Scotia, among others. Zeeland.

Each program begins with the “Salam” in Arabic, customary to Muslims: “Assalam Alaikum wa Rahmatullah wa Barakatoh”, which roughly translates as “Peace be upon you, and may the mercy and blessings of God be with you”, then, Cadar introduces his guest.

Cadar recounted his first experience of wearing a hijab and an abaya, which covers the whole body except for the face, hands and feet, while on a trip to Dubai after graduating from college. high school, and said in this episode that she felt comfortable in the dress, as if she had worn it all her life: “In hindsight, I realized that my problem was not not the hijab but the fear of what other people would think,” she said.

Cadar also recently started wearing a headscarf and told ‘The Star’ that she’s noticed changes in the way people perceive her. She received derogatory comments from strangers, mostly men, about her choice! Other commentators advised him to be careful about his safety in public. Living in fear is something that many Canadian Muslims have spoken about, and spoken about publicly, in the weeks following London’s deadly attack on a Muslim family.

“The Digital Sisterhood” began with the investment of team members. This startup, which expected a revenue of $5,000, received $10,408. The team plans to use the money to cover expenses such as renting a studio in Toronto, recording the podcast and creating films with black Muslim women, a recent study from the University of California du Sud having said that among the top 200 films of 2017-2019, only one featured a Muslim woman in the lead role.

Its main goal is to bring the stories of Muslim women around the world, especially black Muslim women, to the world.

“If a single Muslim girl feels less alone listening to our podcasts, we have fulfilled our mission,” she said.

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