What do the Toronto Raptors, the FIFA World Cup, and Gaza have in common?
Now that I have your attention, let me tell you that this is the first part of the essay; I hope to write the second part based on your thoughts and comments. All feedback is welcome online or simply email to publications@muslimwellness.ca.
Back to the question: What do they have in common?
Almost nothing in themselves. One is Canada’s only NBA team, another is the world’s largest recurring soccer tournament, and the third a place now synonymous with immense suffering, resilience and one of the defining humanitarian crises of our time.
Yet, if you think back, each had an extraordinary ability to make complete strangers speak in the same voice to achieve a shared goal.
We won (NBA championship 2019).
We are in the top 16.
We have to do something.
That two-letter pronoun - We - deserves more attention that it gets.
We don’t naturally identify or feel a sense of belonging with thousands of strangers. We don’t instinctively celebrate, grieve, stand together with strangers, or give up hours from our weekends to march alongside people we’ve never met. And yet, we did all these things together. We flooded the streets to celebrate Toronto Raptor’s first NBA championship win, We organized watch parties and fan zones to cheer our favourite soccer teams to make it to the next rounds. And we marched, wrote and spoke to express solidarity with our brethren in Gaza.
Why?
What transforms a crowd into a community, a fan base, or a group of supporters? What creates that sense of belonging?
Some might reply that the answer is proximity. Put enough people in the same neighborhood, school, mosque or organization and belonging will naturally emerge.
But many of us attend the same mosque every Friday for years, recognizing familiar faces, yet may know only a handful of names - and even less about the lives behind those faces.
Proximity can create familiarity, but familiarity does not necessarily create belonging. So what does?
Social scientists have long studied and concluded that human beings are drawn to groups when they share a sense of identity, a common story and a meaningful purpose.
During a game, whether basketball or soccer, fans become part of something larger than themselves; they become part of the team. We feel the excitement and disappointment in a manner similar to the team and alongside thousands of other people, even though we may never meet them. The same psychological pull operates at much higher stakes. When we see a humanitarian crisis unfold, we feel connected to people we have never met and likely never will. We feel connected to something larger than ourselves. This is the power of shared identity.
But, identity alone is not enough because people can share an identity and still feel disconnected. Most of us share an identity as Muslims living in the same community and attending the same mosque, yet may still lack a deep sense of belonging. In sports, what translates identity to belonging is what happens before and after the game.
People share experiences, history, rituals, symbols, disappointments, wins and traditions. Over time, these become part of a shared story - one that gets passed along generations of family and friends.
If we look closely, participation often comes before belonging, and then strengthens it.
Belonging is not usually created by being simply present in the same place or sharing the same label. It is created when people do something together: contribute, share a responsibility, solve a problem, celebrate a success or work through a disappointment. Each shared act gives people evidence that they are not merely near a community, but a part of it. Research on collective action suggests that participation can reinforce identification with a group over time, creating a cycle in which action deepens belonging and belonging encourages further action (Haim-Litevsky, Komemi, & Lipskaya-Velikovsky, 2023).
Your first connection to a sport may have been watching a game with friends or playing casually in a park. Then you learn the rules, wear the jersey, discover the team’s history, and eventually share in the excitement and disappointment with other fans. Eventually, you may organize a watch party, coach a children’s team, or become the person others turn to for a score. You are no longer a spectator; you have an active role in the story.
The same principle can apply to communities. Attending the same mosque each Friday may create familiarity, but familiarity alone does not ask anything of us or give us a stake in one another.
Participation does.
It could be welcoming newcomers, mentoring youth, preparing or serving meals, raising funds, or simply taking the responsibility for making sure the other person feels seen. When people have a meaningful role, they are not just invited into an already existing community; they help build it.
Instead of saying, “Come join us because we are already a community”, perhaps we should say: “Come participate, and let’s build the community together”.
Bringing people together is not enough. We have to give them meaningful ways to contribute, relationships to invest in and a shared purpose returning to.
Gaza provides a powerful example of this. As the humanitarian crisis unfolded, many Muslims and non Muslims felt a strong sense of collective purpose. We put aside our cultural, religious and ethnic differences and came together for a shared concern, a shared moral question, a shared purpose. For many, the crisis created a sense that individual differences could be set aside in pursuit of something larger. A shared purpose transformed individuals into a collective.
But this raises a difficult question: What happens when the crisis fades from our attention?
Whether the urgency fades because circumstances change or because public attention moves elsewhere, how do we sustain the sense of unity that emerged during that moment?
Perhaps sports fandom and moments of crisis create belonging not simply because people gather, but because they are striving together toward something that matters - a goal, a basket, a victory, a ceasefire, or meaningful change.
I’ll end this part of the essay with the question:
So what could we intentionally build and participate in that would give our communities a shared sense of purpose - and, through that shared purpose, a deeper sense of belonging?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas which will help form the basis of part 2.