Madina Masjid Field Research

Overall Experience:

Rahman:

Personally for me it was quite frustrating as some of the store owners were not co-operative with regards to providing us the information we needed. I understand that they are running a business but at the same time, when Tariq and I visited these stores, we made sure that the owners were not busy and there were no customers in to the store out of respect. Nevertheless, the data we received is incomplete. We need to find alternative sources (phone books?) to find out when some of the Halal stores first opened. However, I did enjoy the actual process of writing information down, talking to some of the store owners and I look forward to the following weeks of conducting more field research. Good Luck to you guys!

Taariq:

I found visiting the eight Halal stores a bit awkward as I am not used to asking owners/workers without having a personal relationship about their business. I respect the workers for answering our questions and also the ones that did not support our research. My mother has said to me that the reason they did not answer our questions was due to them being afraid of us forming competition with neighbouring businesses. One issue I ran into was that they were nervous when I asked about their business history and they also did not speak English very well too, except for Indo Canada Bakery for which the owner’s matured-sons were taking care of the business. I am very much familiar with the neighbourhood as my extended family living in the location and I also know the Mosque very well as my extended family being part of the Mosque committee.

- Rahman & Tariq