A tribute to Dr. Nouman Ali

by Larry Haiven

It’s a measure of the vitality and stature of a person that, when you attend their funeral, you fully expect them to walk in, relishing the crowd, full of life, greetings all around, and ready to participate. And you’re disappointed that they missed the occasion.

That’s how I felt at the Kearney Lake Mosque funeral of Nouman Ali, our dear departed comrade. I could see him with his reflective vest, helmet and mirror (he was an avid cyclist) holding a sign he had produced denouncing one or other Israeli depredation in Gaza. How could he not be there? How could he not be with us?

Dr. Ali succumbed to the horrible wounds inflicted when a delivery truck driver opened his door in Nouman’s bicycle’s path on Friday, July 17. Nouman leaves a wife, Naima, a daughter Eman, a son Mohammed and hundreds of students and colleagues, not to mention the Halifax activist community that he joined at every rally, demonstration, meeting and gathering.

Born in Bagdad, Nouman used to say “I am Iraqi by nationality but Palestinian by blood.” It was in his selfless devotion to that cause that many of us outside the Muslim community came to know and love him.

In the activist world, I tell people, half the job is showing up. Showing up is no trivial matter. Your presence over the long haul, indeed over years, is an invaluable contribution. Being there gives others hope and encouragement and strengthens our collective resolve. We come to depend on your presence to validate our presence. And sometimes, in the awful times we are in, in the midst of genocide and genocide denial, presence is all we have.

Although he was a busy civil engineering professor at Dalhousie University, still working there after 37 years at the age of 71, Nouman showed up. He appeared at every rally. I remember him being a regular visitor and imparting his quiet wisdom to the student encampment for Gaza over three spring/summer months in 2024 on Dal’s main campus. When we picketed the YMCA for rescinding Rana Zaman’s Peace Medal, Nouman was there with his handmade sign “Shame on the YMCA Leadership Hijacked by Zionists.” When we in Independent Jewish Voices worked to produce a comic book biography of Dr. Ismail Zayid, Nouman helped get the word out and he attended the book launch with several supporters just a few weeks ago. He was…always…there, the truest of allies.

But Nouman didn’t only show up. He was an indefatigable organizer for Gaza and other causes.

The Muslim community in Nova Scotia has grown tenfold in thirty years and its dynamism was in no small part due to Dr. Ali. If his contributions to that community alone were counted, we would understand the hundreds of mourners. His friend Tarek Ajjour says:

Brother Nouman was actively engaged with Dartmouth mosque. His contribution in formalizing Ummah Society and building the current building is immense from planning for the building, fundraising and execution. He served in the Ummah Mosque Committee for a considerable period of time. He served as the treasurer for the mosque during a critical period of time. He led management of the events such as Eid prayers in collaboration with the Dartmouth mosque for many years. He was engaged with the Kearney Lake mosque as well. Overall, he served the Muslim Community tremendously since the late 1980s.

Nouman was an unrelenting fundraiser. In February 2024 during Ramadan, IJV Halifax organized a meeting for Dr. Tarek Loubani, the Palestinian physician in London, Ontario who has built the charitable organization “Glia” that provides medical services and products in crisis zones around the world. Two hundred and fifty people attended at the Umma Mosque. Loubani spoke of his work as an emergency doctor in Gaza, of being shot through the leg by Israeli snipers during the 2017-18 “Great March of Return,” of losing first responder colleagues including the very paramedic who treated his wounds. After Loubani’s talk, we called for donations. When the call started for pledges in the tens of thousands, Nouman jumped up and rhymed out several that he himself had secured. In the end $80,000 was raised. Zakat during Ramadan is de rigeur, but this was extraordinary.

And that was de rigeur for Dr. Ali. Among amateur fundraisers, Nouman is a legend.

But his energies were not only with the Muslim community and with the Palestinian cause. He championed preservation of the environment and especially alternatives to the automobile, including bike lanes on increasingly dangerous streets. What an irony that this should have been the cause of his demise. We have had all too many cyclists killed and severely injured by motor vehicles in Halifax.

Nouman was truly known, respected and loved by many here in Halifax. And the pain of his loss is real. But still we “social justice warriors” lack a sense of our own importance and our role in history. We are too modest. At the end of the famous Arthur Miller play “Death of a Salesman” Willy Loman’s wife chides her sons and the audience, for trying to carry on in the face of the death of even a modest human being as she cries out “Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.”

So let’s all of us, even those who did not know him, pay attention to the life of Dr. Nouman Ali, a life where we see all our lives reflected, whose worth, in the words of the Book of Proverbs, was “far more than diamonds.”