Muslim Girl Guides (2010)
In 2010 I camped with and photographed a troop of Muslim Girl Guides. The project was initiated by the National Film Board of Canada, though never completed as intended. The photographs were eventually re-situated as part of an installation created for Canadian Belonging(s) at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, curated by Ellyn Walker. The photographs of the Guides, as part of a larger installation, became distinct examples of ‘Canadian’ belonging that challenge dominant representations of national identity. For images of the installation, see Exhibitions.
The following text was written by my co-camper Jennifer Hollett, with whom the initial version of the project was created.
Middlesex County, Ontario: A marshmallow has burst into flames. A bit scary, but all part of the plan.
As the Girl Guides shriek at the fireball hanging on the end of a carved out stick found in the surrounding forest, the flame is blown out, and a burnt marshmallow remains. Perfection.
When it comes to guiding, scenes don’t get more classic than this. The campfire is the climax of any camping trip, especially for Girl Guides, an institution known for its back-to-nature outdoor activities. And the girls know their role, as they joke, sing, and set marshmallows on fire in the name of s’mores. But if you look closely, the scene isn’t stereotypical as the scenery. Some of the songs are in Arabic. The s’mores are Halal. And underneath the hoodies and ball caps are hijabs. This Girl Guide unit, minus the leaders, is all-Muslim.
The girls’ family backgrounds sound like the United Nations’ Arab League. There’s five-year-old Bushra, the youngest, she’s Egyptian-Canadian. Yasmin, who’s nine, her family is Somali. And Aisha, the oldest at 14, her parents are from Syria and Lebanon. There are 10 girls in total.
“Girl Guides over the years, people look at us as all these white people,” explains white unit leader Joan Cavers. She pauses and pops her eyes out just a bit, to stress the point. “Yet Canada is so multicultural, that you need to include them all. We’ve tried to do that in the programming.”
Historically, Girl Guides is a bunch of white people. In 1909, Lady Baden-Powell founded Girls Guides in Great Britain as the female equivalent to her brother Lord Baden-Powell’s Christian based Boy Scouts. The next year the movement hit Canada, which makes 2010 the 100th anniversary for Girl Guides Canada.
A lot has changed in the last century. Today’s Girl Guides sure isn’t your great grandmother’s Girl Guides: it’s current, diverse, and flexible. Current: The traditional polyester dress, with matching sash has been replaced by stylish t-shirts and roll-up cargo pants. Diverse: the face of a recent Canadian campaign was a black girl with an Afro. Flexible: see the personal choice in the pledge.
Guiding Promise
I promise to do my best,
To be true to myself, my God/faith* and Canada;
I will help others,
And accept the Guiding Law.
*Choose either the word God or the word faith according to your personal convictions.
But there isn’t always a handy little asterisk; change is a work in progress, and this is clearly evident in this London, Ontario unit.
A Muslim mom approached Cavers a couple of years ago to form a Muslim-only unit for her three daughters. Cavers trained the mom and other Muslim mothers with the idea that they would take the lead and run the unit, but that didn’t happen. So she’s stayed on, with the help of other non-Muslim leaders, hoping that leadership within the community will come, eventually. Cavers, who is known to the girls as Dr. Joan, is a retired veterinarian, who’s been in guiding for over 47 years. She wears this history on her blue Tilley hat, which is plastered in Girl Guide badges, all shapes and sizes, colours and icons. She speaks about the Muslim unit like a proud, yet frustrated, parent.
“All these girls are Canadian… but because they go into a closed community for school, and they do know their parents’ language, they’re still under that culture. That’s a challenge to us.”
Aisha is the oldest teenager in the group, and it is evident in her tall height, tweezed eyebrows, and gangsta ball cap (placed sideways, on top of her hijab). Despite her big presence, she is soft spoken, if not shy. She’s Syrian-Lebanese, and is moving to Lebanon next summer. “My parents think that Girls Guides is just a random weird thing, that we do nothing in,” says Aisha matter of factly. She says her dad has to pick her up from the weekly meeting, and he thinks it’s a “stupid thing.”
Unlike other Girl Guide troops, there is minimal interest from the local Muslim community. Logistics have been an ongoing issue, specifically where to meet. Originally, the guides’ weekly meetings took place conveniently at the private Muslim school the girls attend, but they lost the space and support from the school administration who didn’t seem to see the value in guiding.
Cavers says she once scheduled an arts day at a church hall, a common public meeting space, but a parent questioned this, so she made sure the crosses were put away while the girls were there. Cavers, a Christian actively involved in her own church, also has to keep an eye on prayer times for the Muslim guides during their weekly meetings. “Sometimes their prayer time is before they come to a meeting, and other times it can be during a meeting,” Cavers recounts. “It got to the point where we were reminding them ‘oh, you haven’t done your prayers yet.’ We never knew what time they were suppose to be doing them, we just knew it was around the sunset time.”
On the camping trip, Hanan Helbah has tagged along. She’s the naturally elegant mother of little Bushra, and is on the camping trip as a Muslim chaperone, to make sure the girls’ follow the rules of their faith. This includes praying fives times a day: before dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening. “Our Girl Guide unit is different from others, like, we pray,” explains Meriam, 12, the singer of the unit. “When we go camping, we have to pray. We can’t miss no prayer.”
The troop’s prayers at camp marries ritual and improvisation. Helbah is in charge, and the girls follow her direction. Since there isn’t a prayer room, or prayer mats, they spread random bed sheets over the campground, parallel to the tents. They line up, bow, then kneel and bow down repetitively, in devotion.
Islam is rooted in tradition, yet there are many modern mash-ups. A Montreal designer recently created the “Resport,” a hijab for Sporty Spice Muslims. There’s the Hijabi Monologues, inspired by Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues, but less vaginas, more veils. And Princess Hijab, an anonymous French grafitti artist who paints hijabs over women in advertisements.
Like the Muslim Girl Guide unit, these culture clashes create a hybrid, a new entity that seems odd to its origins, but complete natural to its offspring. “It’s actually fun,” admits Meriam when asked about guiding. “Instead of staying home, and going on the computer, you meet your friends, do fun activities. It’s more interesting than just staying at home, wasting your time.”
“From the sounds of it, it doesn’t sound like they put their children in as many extra activities as a lot of our Canadian parents do,” Cavers says. The girls aren’t managing schedules with play dates and ballet classes, piano lessons and swimming courses, so guiding offers them the extra-curricular activity that made Girl Guides popular in the first place.
Bushra’s mom Helbah totally gets Girl Guides. “I always wanted to be a Girl Guide. I grew up in Egypt, and it was kind of hard for girls to go out on our own and all that.” She said as soon as she heard about the all-Muslim unit, she signed her daughter up. “With the Girl Guides principals, I found lots of similarities, between our traditions and the Girl Guides. For instance, respecting others and following rules. And helping around whenever you get a chance, even without being asked, is part of our culture too. I can’t think of any differences actually.”
Meriam’s parents are from Palestine, but she identifies herself as a Canadian. When it comes to wearing the hijab, she says she’s often asked if it’s hot to wear in the summer. “‘Aren’t you so sweaty it’s summer, why are you wearing this?’” imitates Meriam. “It doesn’t really matter, because we don’t really care what they think.”
And in an all-Muslim unit, the girls don’t have to worry about annoying questions. “I’ve had a couple of people asking me about having a unit that’s just for the Muslim girls, shouldn’t they integrate?” Cavers confesses. “But the girls seem to feel comfortable with themselves.”
Nine-year-old Yasmin is one of the most passionate Muslims in the unit. She wears the hijab, even though she doesn’t have to until puberty, and she even speaks about fasting with enthusiasm. “Being a Muslim is cool and fun,” she says as if she’s describing Hannah Montana’s relevance It was Yasmin’s mom who came up with the idea for the unit, but she can’t camp this weekend because she’s at home taking care of her two-year-old son. Yasmin’s dad is in Kenya at the moment. Yasmin is convinced the unit will grow in size, and surprisingly, she hopes non-Muslims join in the future. “I would like other people from other religions to come, because they can learn from our religion and we can learn from theirs.”
Helbah says she was discussing this with Cavers over the weekend, and she would prefer to leave it as is. “Maybe we can teach the girls more of our traditions and principals through the Girl Guides.”
Even though Cavers’ job is to teach the girls, she admits in many ways they teach her. “We keep on learning, as we work with the girls,” she says. Joan recounts a Girl Guide event where the closing snack was Rice Krispy squares. “We didn’t realize the marshmallows in them aren’t the kind the Muslim girls are suppose to be eating. They ate the squares, not knowing the gelatin was in there,” she says with a nervous laugh. “So we know now, and with certain foods, we go looking to their proper stores to buy them.”
Back at the camp fire, the girls are giddy. They’re laughing and enjoying their roasted marshmallows, from the proper store, this time reciting traditional Girl Guide songs from duotang folders. “Fire's burning, fire's burning, draw nearer, draw nearer. In the glowing, in the glowing, come sing and be merry, come sing and be merry.”