Stamp featuring Edmonton-designed Canadian prayer rug coming to a mailbox near you
A project celebrating Edmonton's Muslim community and deep-rooted connections to the land has stamped a place in Canadian history.
The Canadian Prayer Rug created nine years ago in Edmonton is now set to travel the country as the image on Canada Post's newest stamp released in honour of Eid celebrations.
"The rug to me is about being at home, about feeling you really belong," Omar Yaqub, executive director for IslamicFamily said in an interview with Radio Active Monday. IslamicFamily is the non-profit hub that facilitated the Canadian Prayer Rug project.
"What we're trying to do is evoke that sense of home and place, and the way we do that is through reconciliation — recognizing those first stories through knowing our neighbours."
For more than 1,400 years, Muslims have prayed on rugs reflecting local motifs, flora, architecture and tradition.
It was in that spirit in 2016 that drove a group of Edmonton Muslim youth to interview Indigenous elders and families of early settlers asking: What would a Canadian prayer rug look like?
Those interviews were then captured in a collaboration between Métis designer Kit Craven and weaver Noor Iqbal.
Woven with locally sourced wool and dyes, the design of the prayer rug aims to depict Alberta's diverse landscape and both Indigenous and Muslim symbols.
Rising up from the rug's centre is a lodgepole pine used to make teepees, also meant to be reminiscent of the cedars of Lebanon, where many early Muslim settlers came from.
Blue triangles in Cree motif represent the Rocky Mountains and North Saskatchewan River while a row of golden wheat symbolizes the abundance of the prairies.
The rug's two crescent moons pay homage to the lunar calendar which is important to both Indigenous people and Muslims who use it to calculate the start of Ramadan.
Crescent moons can also be found on top of the two minarets at Edmonton's Al Rashid Mosque.
"[The rug] celebrates the deep, enduring connection between Indigenous and Muslim communities, which helped to open the country's first mosque in Edmonton in 1938," Canada Post wrote in a news release on Monday.
"More than a work of art, the rug symbolizes unity and multiculturalism within Treaty 6 Territory, which includes Edmonton."
This is Canada Post's seventh stamp to commemorate the Islamic holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha — multi-day celebrations that include communal prayers, feasts, family gatherings, gift-giving and acts of charity.
Canada Post also releases annual stamps marking Diwali, Hanukkah and Christmas.
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