When we started brainstorming for the first time, we came up with an idea quite quickly: Why not to fight the anti-Muslim campaign we saw a few days earlier while walking around Warsaw? As much as we loved the idea, the implementation was not about to go smoothly.
All three of us had different visions of the campaign itself as well as of how we wanted to achieve the set goal. Considering our different backgrounds, knowledge about Muslims, in particular those living in Poland, and similar temperaments, altercations were unavoidable. Our opinions varied on distant elements of the campaign – from its outreach to the design of the main poster. Even font style used in our logo became a subject of a passionate discussion.
Logo of Campaign
Once we figured it out, we could visit the mosque, make an appointment with Imam and take a few photos… and again, meet some obstacles. Who would think that without an approval of Imam, Muslims would not want to take a photo? And who would think that a Polish Muslim woman who lived in Iraq for 40 years would give us such an advice “Oh girls, give it a rest! You won’t change people’s minds. That’s how they are here”. Well, it’s still worth to try, we thought.
Our day, however, was not lost. We managed to find several warm-hearted souls ready to help us.
Maaz
We met Greg (Grzegorz), a Polish convert to Islam. He bought our hearts with his openness, willingness to talk and tranquility that emanated from him. Thanks to Greg we completed a part of our mission – creating our first video!
Greg (Grzegorz)
Next day we visited mosque again and met with Imam – a Syrian who has lived in Poland for 33 years. Unfortunately, he didn’t agree to record our conversation.
Our group managed to conduct a few interviews and collect some information that are available on our Facebook Fanpage. You can also watch there our second video. It was created with help of Muslims friends who live in Poland for few years and were happy to help us with our campaign that they found interesting and valuable.
Facebook Fanpage of our Campaign
If you think that we couldn’t have faced more obstacles, well… keep on reading.
None of the Muslims we talked with was a target of hate speech! How is that possible?! Statistics show that 56% of Poles have anti-Islamic sentiments (CBOS 2015) and yet, our Muslim friends find Poles tolerant, open and kind. We came up with the conclusion: if there is no hate speech in real life then we should focus on fighting against hate speech online.
Thus, we decided for our campaign to aim at increasing visibility of Muslims living in Poland. We recognize that engaging with Muslims, providing them with a platform to voice their own experiences and, therefore, bringing visibility to their narratives and their stories is the first step in neutralizing hostility that Muslims face, both public and virtual spheres. The second step, we believe, is actually fostering a different kind of environment where relations, dialogue, conversations, and negotiations take place between Muslims and Poles.
Having our most intense days of the campaign behind us, we feel as much proud as relieved. It was hard and nerve-racking experience but we’ve learned a lot. On one hand, now we know how to interview people, film and combine different ideas. On the other hand, we’ve learned that we have to be flexible and patient.
Maja , Esteban, Marta
Nevertheless, every cloud has a silver lining and we achieved a lot in terms of self-development, and we don’t need any more “likes” on Facebook to know it was worth it.
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