This conversation is part of a larger one that follows Dr. Mo as he is known to his patients, as he talks about his experience as a Muslim medical doctor and a visible ethnic minority in the UK at this time in its history. Britain has left the EU with Brexit and has swung towards much more restrictive measures when it comes to migration and refugees. The irony of this is that this leaving came at the time of the pandemic in which a disproportionate share of medical care fell to newcomers and visible minorities who are on the frontline of essential services, senior’s care, food and farm services, etc.; many paid with their lives.
The short documentary gives one pause, especially considering the senseless murder of the Afzal family in London, Ontario. What is the source of the hatred? How different is this response from the rise in hate crimes against Asian Canadians when we allow ourselves to be drawn into talking about the “China Virus?” Where does that kind of talk lead?
At the heart of the short documentary is the contradiction. We follow Dr. Mo as he lives out his Muslim faith as doctor on the frontlines of Covid, a volunteer to various charitable causes and one who pursues the cause of the marginalized even as we emerge from a pandemic. Will the world we return to be ready to take up the root causes of systemic racism and work for justice and change or close in on itself and wall ourselves off from that ‘other world?’