Monia Mazigh

Monia Mazigh was born in Tunisia on 10 July 1970 and emigrated to Canada in 1991 at the age of twenty-one.¹ She earned a PhD in financial economics from McGill University.¹ Mazigh became publicly known for leading a campaign in Canada for the release of her husband, Maher Arar, from his imprisonment in Syria; she later served as national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and wrote books about the experience.¹

Mazigh worked as a research assistant at the University of Ottawa and then taught French there from 2000.¹ After her husband was detained in New York and deported to Syria in 2002, Mazigh worked with human-rights organisations in a public campaign pressing for his release, which continued until his return to Canada in October 2003.¹ She was first courted by the Liberal Party, then ran as the New Democratic Party candidate in Ottawa South in the 2004 federal election, finishing third with 8,080 votes — at that time the NDP's best federal result in the riding.¹ Mazigh then worked as a policy researcher at NDP headquarters for about a year, until the spring of 2007.¹ In 2011 she endorsed the Canadian Boat to Gaza initiative, part of the second Freedom Flotilla.¹ In June 2015 Mazigh was appointed national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.¹

Mazigh published Hope and Despair: My Struggle to Free My Husband, Maher Arar in 2008, her account of the campaign for his release.¹ She published the novel Mirrors and Mirages in 2010 and the novel Hope Has Two Daughters in 2017.¹ Her book Gendered Islamophobia: My Journey with a Scar(f) was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 2023 awards.¹

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum. The article reports that Mazigh personally does not support same-sex marriage and that she said during her 2004 campaign that she would abstain from voting on any legislation permitting it.¹ The article also records her public endorsement of the Canadian Boat to Gaza in 2011 as part of her stated activism on human-rights and foreign-policy questions.¹

• Monia Mazigh — English Wikipedia¹
• Monia Mazigh — Arabic Wikipedia²
• Monia Mazigh — Urdu Wikipedia³
• Monia Mazigh — Wikidata Q3320709⁴