ISLAM IN CANADA
Muslim Canadians in the Coming Decade Can Muslims move beyond the mosque? BY KATHERINE BULLOCK
U
nhappy with the thought of being conscripted by the Ottomans to fight in Yemen, Bedouin Ferran moved from the Levant to Canada in 1907. In 1909 a Catholic priest renamed him “Peter Baker.” The Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories, where he worked as an itinerant trader, nicknamed him the “Artic Arab” or, somewhat confusedly, the “Jew.” The local barber and hotel owner, where he often ate while in Fitzgerald, dubbed him the “Black Turk” for his curly black hair. An enterprising man, one of his claims to fame was keeping the fresh fruit that he sold from freezing. Another one was his 1964 election to the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly. A Muslim Arab when there were few Muslims in Canada, we know little about his self-concept as a Muslim, except that his funeral was conducted in 1973 at the Al Rashid mosque in Edmonton — Canada’s first mosque. We also know him to be an enterprising and hardworking man who took the racism he faced in stride. When he traveled alone on his sled with his dogs, camping out amidst snow glistening on pine tree needles and the track ahead, a vast expanse of sky above, did he connect with his Creator? Many of us can identify with the feeling of being the lone Muslim in our city, school or workplace. Many of us know the struggle it
takes to reestablish oneself in a new country faced by cultural and language barriers; to smile and carry on in the face of racism, to pass on such qualities as faith, hard work, entrepreneurship and law-abidingness to the next generation. Since Baker’s arrival in 1907, Muslim Canadians have recognized the need to provide each other the support and mutual assistance commended by Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam), who stated, clasping his fingers together, “Verily, the believers are like a structure, each
IF WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL COMMUNITY MEMBERS AND FOR ENSURING THAT EVERYONE IS FLOURISHING, THEN WE NEED TO PAY MORE ATTENTION TO THE UNMOSQUED. MOSQUEONLY SOLUTIONS TO COMMUNITY PROBLEMS ARE NECESSARY, BUT NOT ENOUGH.
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part strengthening the other” (“al-Bukhari,” hadith no. 467; “Muslim,” hadith no. 2585). Just like the Muslims who migrated to Madina, Canadian Muslims’ first step was to build a mosque to provide a space for daily and Friday prayers and to serve as its spiritual heartbeat. The mosque circulates the oxygen of connection to God through prayer, the vitamins and minerals that give the energy to work and contribute to families and the wider society, the sustenance to support teaching and educating children, the sinews to bind together in mutual assistance and the platelets that stop the wounds of racism. So what do we do when Muslims don’t come to the mosque? Is the lifeblood that circulates from it carrying toxins or unable to nourish those Muslims? A 2011 study by Dr. Ihsan Bagby, chair of ISNA U.S.’s Masjid Development Committee, found that many youth, women, converts, minority ethnicities and African-American Muslims feel unwelcome or uncomfortable in mosques. Subsequent research, including a well-known 2014 documentary “Unmosqued,” corroborates this. The U.S. trends are found in Canada as well. Many of these groups stop attending and either live Islam alone or try to establish their own communities. If we are responsible for all community members and for ensuring that everyone is flourishing, then we need to pay more attention to the unmosqued. Mosque-only solutions to community problems are necessary, but not enough. Social science studies have identified two clusters of long-term trends, which I call “changing patterns of authority” and “youth struggles.” As only a handful of Muslims are addressing these trends’ fallout strategically, we need to focus on understanding the issues and identifying solutions to these systemic, deeply rooted trends that both contribute to the unmosqued phenomenon and undermine mosque-centric efforts to address community needs.
CHANGING PATTERNS OF AUTHORITY Karim H. Karim’s 2009 study “Changing Perceptions of Islamic Authority among Muslims in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom” (https://irpp.org/podcast/
