By Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun | Link to Article
By Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun | Link to Article
A new book digs into how Muslims are integrating, or not, in regards to employment, voting, trust, women’s equality, ethnic enclaves, religiosity and their attachment to Canada. This photo is on the cover of the book by Abdolmohammad (Abdie) Kazemipur.
How are Canada’s Muslims really doing?
If you answered this question solely on the headlines about Canadian soldiers killed by extremists and a convert from Ottawa threatening Islamic State attacks, you could be forgiven for believing Canada’s Muslims are thinking only about online beheadings and homegrown terrorism.
But everyday reality for Canada’s 1.2 million Muslims, most of whom are immigrants, is peppered with far more challenges — both external and internal — than those related to attention-grabbing acts of ideology-fuelled violence.
The Canadian Race Relations Foundation released a poll this month, for instance, showing three of four Canadians believe the country’s multicultural policy is “incompatible” with Canadian norms, particularly in regards to Muslim customs such as hijabs and burkas and Shariah law.
However, away from the headlines, the helpful news is that a few researchers are starting to give us a more complete picture of Canada’s Muslims, who make up the country’s second largest religion.
The empirical reality check on Muslims offered by University of Lethbridge sociologist Abdolmohammad (Abdie) Kazemipur, however, will not entirely comfort those worried about the rising presence of Muslims, who make up one in five new arrivals to Canada, or Muslims themselves.
In his new book, The Muslim Question in Canada: A Story of Segmented Integration (UBC Press), Kazemipur explores how Muslims are integrating, or not, in regards to such things as employment, voting, trust, women’s equality, ethnic enclaves, religiosity and their attachment to Canada.
One reality confirmed by Kazemipur, who immigrated to Canada from Iran two decades ago, is that Muslims do, indeed, worry about Western Muslims become radicalized and disturbing the peace.
Their anxiety connects not only to 9/11 and the train bombings in London and Madrid, but to the recent killings in Ottawa and Quebec and the 2006 arrest in Toronto of 18 terrorist suspects, many of whom were second-generation immigrants.
Kazemipur analyzes surveys, mostly from Statistics Canada, that show 52 per cent of Muslims worry about extremists.
But larger portions of Muslims, roughly 65 per cent, fret more over other things. “They report an unusually high degree of concern about their future in Canada, about the likelihood of their experiencing discrimination, and unemployment.”
Since I suspect most Canadians are inclined to view Muslim immigrants as intense followers of the Prophet Mohammed, it’s important to highlight another one of Kazemipur’s more unforeseen findings: Muslims in Canada don’t seem tremendously religious.