Islam in Canada - Demographics, Concentration, and Life

Demographics, Concentration, and Life

Most Canadian Muslims are people who were raised Muslim. As with immigrants in general, Muslim immigrants have come to Canada for a variety of reasons. These include higher education, security, employment, and family re-unification. 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 the former Yugoslavia. However Canada has yet to receive any significant numbers of Iraqis fleeing the Iraqi War. But in general almost every Muslim country in the world has sent immigrants to Canada — from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania to Yemen to Bangladesh.

The fertility rate for Muslims in Canada is significantly higher than the rate for other Canadians. But this is still below 2.11 replacement value. (an average of 2.01 children per woman for Muslims, compared with 1.6 children per woman for other populations in Canada).

The majority of Canadian Muslims — and not coincidentally a large proportion of the country's immigrants — live in the province of Ontario, with the largest groups settled in and around the Greater Toronto Area. According to the 2001 Census, there were 254,110 Muslims living in Greater Toronto.

British Columbia also has a significant Muslim population. Canada's national capital Ottawa hosts many Lebanese and Somali Muslims, where the Muslim community numbered approximately 40,000 in 2001. Greater Montreal's Muslim community of large numbers of Moroccan, Algerian and Lebanese descent neared 100,000 in 2001. These communities are not exclusively, but predominantly, Muslim. In addition to Vancouver, Ottawa, and Montreal, nearly every major Canadian metropolitan area has a Muslim community, including Halifax (3,070), Windsor (10,745), Winnipeg (4,805), Calgary (28,920), Edmonton (19,580), Vancouver (52,590), where more than a third are of Iranian descent, and Toronto (30,230).

Although Bosniaks make a small share in Canadian Muslim community and small share in Canadian Bosnian community, 4 out of 64 Canadian mosques have the attribute Bosnian.

Table 1: Muslim Population of Canada in 2001

As the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of religious expression, Canadian Muslims face no official religious discrimination. Under Section 2(a) of the Charter, the wearing of the hijab is permitted in schools and places of work, although Quebec has ruled that medical faculties are not required to accommodate Muslim women who wish to be served by female employees. Religious holidays and dietary restrictions are also respected, but outside major urban areas it may be difficult to find halal food. It is also often difficult to observe Islamic rules against usury. Muslims in some parts of Canada have asked to have family dispute courts to oversee small family cases but were faced with rigorous opposition from traditional groups and liberal Muslim groups, labelling the request as a move towards imposing a 'Sharia' Law. This proposal was opposed by the Muslim Canadian Congress, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women and non-Muslim women's groups. In light of publicity, Muslims in Canada have elected to put the subject to rest.

In December 2011 Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Immigration, Citizenship, and Multiculturalism, announced that women would be required to have their faces uncovered during citizenship ceremonies.