Sisters’ Dialogue was founded in 2021 in order to confront the string of reported physical and verbal attacks against racialized Muslim women
“Month after month, there is another attack and most of the victims are Black Muslim sisters,” explains Wati Rahmat, a Malay Muslim woman living in Edmonton. “It’s created a lot of fear and anxiety amongst women.”
Rahmat recalls after the first series of attacks from December 2020 into early 2021, “nobody was talking about mental health. Nobody was talking about victim support.” Rahmat’s organization aimed to fill that gap, and with its Third Space collaboration, give Muslim women the community support they desperately needed.
Once the story is shared, the actors “play it back,” repeating the storytellers’ dialogue, turning bits and pieces of the story into an interpretative dance, or using props to replay significant moments, often with live musical accompaniment. Despite the actors never having heard the stories before they take the stage, they produce complete performances that often evoke strong emotions from the audience.
Rahmat and Lu aim to continue their collaborations, aspiring to eventually make a session open to non-Muslims to watch. For another participant, Asha Yassin, seeing her story played back made her realize she wasn’t alone. Yassin, a counselling psychology student and Sisters’ Dialogue member, remembers feeling apprehensive about playback at first, but left feeling a sense of Muslim sisterhood.