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Islam in Canada

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Through Islam, Canada and Mosque

Lab · Class 8–12Archaeology of Delhi

There are a number of Islamic organizations and seminaries (madrasas). Opinion polls show most Muslims feel "very proud" to be Canadians, and majority are religious and attend mosque at least once a week. More than half of Canadian Muslims live in Ontario, with significant populations also living in Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia (BC).

The percentage of Muslims in Canada is 4.9% as of the 2021 census. In the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), 10% of the population is Muslim, and in Greater Montreal, 8.7% of the population is Muslim.

History

1867–1960s

Four years after Canada's founding in 1867, the 1871 Canadian Census found 13 European Muslims among the population. The first Muslim organization in Canada was registered by immigrants from greater Syria living in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1934. The first Canadian mosque was constructed in Edmonton in 1938 when there were approximately 700 European Muslims in the country. The building is now part of the museum at Fort Edmonton Park.

The years after World War II saw a small increase in the Muslim population. However, Muslims were still a distinct minority. It was only after the removal of European immigration preferences in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Muslims began to arrive in significant numbers.

1960s–1980s

Bosniaks and Albanian Muslims were the founders of Jami Mosque, the first mosque in Toronto in 1968, whose readjustment into a mosque—originally an old Catholic school building—occurred on June 23, 1973. The mosque was readjusted for the Bosniaks, with the support of the local Christians. Later, with the action of University of Toronto (U of T) professor Qadeer Baig, it was purchased by Asian Muslims, while Albanians and Bosniaks later founded the Albanian Muslim Society and Bosanska džamija (Bosnian Mosque) respectively. The oldest mosque in Toronto, with the oldest minaret in Ontario built in Ottoman style is in Etobicoke, part of the Bosnian Islamic Centre.

1980s–2000s

The first madrasa (Islamic seminary) in North America, al-Rashid Islamic Institute was established in Cornwall, Ontario in 1983 to teach hafiz and ulama and focuses on the traditional Hanafi school of thought. The seminary was established by Mazhar Alam, originally from Bihar, India, under the direction of his teacher the leading Indian Tablighi Jamaat scholar Zakariyya Kandhlawi. Due to its proximity to the U.S. border city of Massena the school has historically had a high percentage of American students. Their most prominent graduate, Muhammad Alshareef completed his hifz in the early 1990s then went on to form the AlMaghrib Institute.

As with immigrants in general, Muslim immigrants have come to Canada for a variety of reasons. These include higher education, security, employment, and family reunification. Others have come for religious and political freedom, and safety and security, leaving behind civil wars, persecution, and other forms of civil and ethnic strife. In the 1980s, Canada became an important place of refuge for those fleeing the Lebanese civil war. The 1990s saw Somali Muslims arrive in the wake of the Somali civil war as well as Bosniaks fleeing the breakup of Yugoslavia. However Canada has yet to receive any significant numbers of Iraqis fleeing the Iraq war. However, in general almost every Muslim country in the world has sent immigrants to Canada from Pakistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania to Yemen and Bangladesh.

According to the Canadian Census of 1971 there were 33,000 Muslims in Canada. In the 1970s large-scale non-European immigration to Canada began. This was reflected in the growth of the Muslim community in Canada. In 1981, the Census listed 98,000 Muslims. The 1991 Census indicated 253,265 Muslims.

2000s–present

By 2001, the Islamic community in Canada had grown to more than 579,000. In the same year, the fertility rate for Muslims in Canada was higher than the rate for other Canadians (an average of 2.4 children per woman for Muslims in 2001, compared with 1.6 children per woman for other populations in Canada).

Population estimates for the Census 2006 pointed to a figure of 800,000. As of May 2013, Muslims account for 3.2% of the total population, with a total of over a million. In January 2017, six Muslims were killed in a shooting attack at a Quebec city mosque.

In the contemporary era, there are halal restaurants across Canada, including over 1000 in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

One of the first Islamic internet radio stations, Canadian Islamic Broadcasting Network, was started in 2019.

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