Making it to its 25th anniversary this month, Sada al-Mashrek has reflected values of the Middle East in the new West. Despite the lack of resources at the beginning, Sada al-Mashrek made efforts for the sake of a strong Muslim/Arab community and voiced out news and analyses in a land of prairies, which has turned from foreign land to homeland for our children and grandchildren. Eventually, it was crucial to save the history that mainstream media might overlook. A group of the earliest immigrants have maintained links with their homelands overseas as their nostalgia – but not reality – has kept them dreaming of going back there.
Sada al-Mashrek has made sure to reflect the various interests and understandings of the Muslim/Arab community, encompassing editors, reporters and journalists who have written about different aspects of intellect, politics, society, education and history. Simultaneously, Sada al-Mashrek has held on tightly to its roots, ethics and values and has strictly avoided inciting sectarian hate and showing religious bias. The periodical has congratulated Christians for their holidays and reported on their celebrations and masses. Sada al-Mashrek has as well congratulated Muslims for their holidays and reported on events held at masjids and Islamic institutions. The staff have introduced immigrant high achievers from different fields to readers, celebrated the community’s successes and shared their grief like when tragedy struck Quebec’s Grand Mosque…
Furthermore, Sada al-Mashrek has handled politics excellently, meeting candidates of Arab origins running for municipal, provincial or federal elections, and building bridges between them and the community members and activists. Following and reporting on most community events of culture, arts and education, the staff have made sure they bring unreported news stories to readers, regardless of what other Middle Eastern or Western media have written about. After all, professionalism requires meticulousness, which in turn necessitates that staff respect readers’ minds and time, avoid all nonsense and unreliable information and false propaganda, and work hard to stick to facts unbiasedly, contrastingly with many media outlets, whose staff act as mercenaries and distort evident truths to please their masters …
But the harder part was accomplished a couple of years ago, when Sada al-Mashrek made use of the prevalent communication and social media and got digitised, overcoming the big cost and efforts needed to distribute hard copies over vast locations. Since then, Sada al-Mashrek, a periodical and a news website, has been publishing daily news and a variety of articles, continuously summing up a range of news stories covered by major Anglophonic and Francophonic Canadian media and broadcasting updates to readers. That way readers are saved time and effort to get the local and global news stories they’re interested in…
Locally undertaken, publishing Sada al-Mashrek has depended on personal efforts and on participation from community members themselves. Like a beautiful, proud bride captivating her acquaintances’ hearts, Sada al-Mashrek has sincerely and realistically expressed the community’s aspirations and pains and is now celebrating its silver jubilee. Though we might lack futuristic capabilities as the world-of-media technology accelerates, we are hopefully looking forward to maintaining our progress, especially when the young generation might be offered potentials that we haven’t been offered. Who says dreams don’t come true when there’s strong determination? After all, Sada al-Mashrek was launched by the vision of a revered aspirer and is now in a strong position. As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, we pay appreciation and many thanks to our dedicated readers and a lot of respect to the staff.
The Editors