Yukon Muslim Society Whitehorse
Thank you, Trump, for giving Canadians a passionate cause — our survival as a nation. But how to keep the glue fresh holding a rickety, outsized state together? Islam tells us to thank God for our blessings and work hard to keep on the ‘straight path’. We are now everywhere across Canada and eager to stay that way, faced with fearsome Islamophobia from the bully across the border. We may be the ‘mouse that roared’ but strong faith can work miracles. We are a vital key to survival of 21st century Canada.
Islam: last survivor
Since the rise of modern imperialism in the 16th century, the world has been at war.
Christian European empires at war with the world, i.e., with each other and with the indigenous people of the world. This meant enslaving countries where the other great religions – Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam – predominated. Imperialism undermined Christianity in the European societies, now the ‘collective West’, which are now largely secular, the new gods money and technology, but the fall out from all this was to populate the declining empire centers with their African and Asian victims, eager to find a place at the table. Secularism and a world order stacked in favor of the collective West has meant decadence and declining populations there, at the same time, making room at the table for industrious go-getters from the former colonies.
The infusion of this new blood suddenly puts the great religious on their own path of rivalry for ‘hearts and minds’ in opposition to the secular gods, which failed to provide a healthy moral order. Secularism resulted in ever more destructive world wars, leaving the whole world today on the brink of death not only of humans but of nature, the entire planet. While Christianity claims to have the largest following (after all, it came at gunpoint), Islam remains the main rival, despite the five centuries of war against it, growing faster than any other religion, continuing full-steam-ahead today.
Warfare waged by empire against indigens is by definition asymmetric, big shiny guns vs spears, rocks, or variations on nonviolent resistance, Gandhi’s Satyagraha, inspired by his own resistance to British empire. Buddhism has come to the West as a universal religion, popular among disaffected youth, but neither it nor Hinduism or nature worship have made any real impact on the world order. While Jews do have a major role in all this, it is not Judaism but rather empire at work so we can discount Judaism as a positive force. Christianity (with the exception of Orthodoxy) has had influence more due to its political economic role as willing handmaiden of empire.
Islam is a different matter. It claims to act as a religion in world affairs. While Christianity claims more followers, they are mostly pacified excolonial subjects, and even they are at odds with the current secularized Christianity promoted by ‘collective West’ missionaries.
- 50% of Canadian Muslims consider themselves very religious,
- 77% say Islam impacts their daily life,
- 60% always eat halal meat, and observe Ramadan strictly,
- 41% pray at least 5x a day.
Only Islam has both escaped the secular trap which imperialism set to mold subjects to a post-imperial world order ruled by money and technology, and insists on living according to religious intent, with belief central to our lives.
Dandelions
Despite Chinese communism/capitalism’s love affair with Israel (Jews are, after all, masters of moneymaking), ordinary Chinese love the Palestinians, nicknaming them ‘dandelions’ on Tiktok, i.e., disdained but undaunted, flying through the air (as on Oct 7), landing to come alive, beautiful, natural – all miracles of God’s creation. This metaphor works in spades for Muslims today.
Canada has been a testing ground for this, where ‘Mohammetans’ trickled in, starting in the 1880s, as individuals who managed to defy the racist immigration policies intent on expanding the white empire, as if brown, black and Asian weren’t really part of humanity. It is a heartwarming story testifying to human resilience and showing a path out of the dying imperial order.
At the beginning of the imperial era, there were robust communities of Muslims throughout Eurasia, from Spain to China, and Africa, from Egypt to Ghana. Without five centuries of Christian empire and the war against Islam, most of the world would probably be followers of the Prophet Muhammad. Instead, the Muslim world, the entire world, was subjugated to nominally Christian empires, quickly losing faith to money and technology, and we are living out the consequences. While Christianity purports to be egalitarian, free of racism, its sorry imperial past, condoning slavery in the Americas and culminating to massive bloodbaths in the 20th century, is a legacy Islam does not share. On the contrary, millions of Muslims were kidnapped and sent into slavery and Muslims were victims of both Christian/secular bloodbaths.
While Islam is criticized for not promoting unrestricted technology and wealth extraction, that was never an inspiration for the faith. Our brief sojourn on Earth is not about accumulating wealth, but rather to worship, to thank God for the miracle of life, and to use our time to try to improve ourselves, to follow the ‘straight path’ of moral and ethical living. That is what all religions are about, so Christianity’s decline came when it lost that vital thread, leaving the other religious traditions less compromised. Islam is seen as the chief rival, so it has suffered the most. But suffering is at the heart of all religion, and the test of health is to turn suffering into tempering, strengthening resistance to evil. The horrors of the open genocide against Palestinians and the incredible resilience of those suffering is testament to this.
*****
Murray Hogben’s Minarts on the Horizon: Muslim Pioneers in Canada (2022) is a trip through Canadian history and across Canada’s vast lands, collecting at least a hundred stories of plucky Muslims, men and women, who came to make a life here, starting in the 1880s, invariably men who came, found their feet, then brought over a young bride from home, and raised a new generation of Canadian Muslims. But also a few plucky boys or women who did the same. None came with the idea of riches, but rather escaping persecution or wars, looking for a safe place to raise a family and keep the flame of Islam alive. They brought the spark of the ummah and kept it alive, providing enduring warm in a cold and forbidding continent.
Hogben is a convert from Presbyterianism, like most converts having fallen in love with a Muslim. His love, Alia, also a student at Carleton University, was the daughter of the Indian High Commissioner in the 1950s. Although there are no statistics on conversion, few Muslims convert to Christianity, the religion of the oppressor, and really just a less coherent version of Islam. Missionaries soon learned that and left them alone. Again, no statistics, but my sense (and personal experience) is that it is easier to convert from Protestantism to Islam, both because of the lack of religious imagery and the simplicity in both. At the same time, Protestants proved to be the most hostile to Islam, with countless anecdotes in Hogben’s history of Catholics being generous, often at life-threatening moments or where no space was available to worship, providing that space. We see how Protestantism collapsed quickly in the 20th century while Catholicism still thrives, so its hostility is understandable.
The first Muslims officially registered in Canada were James and Agnes Love of Upper Canada (Ontario) in 1851, ethnic Scots, and another family by 1871, the Simons from the US, east Europeans from Ottoman lands. Most of our first Muslims were Syrian Lebanese (Lebanon being part of Syria in Ottoman days) and Albanians, escaping the beleaguered Ottoman army, constantly threatened by Europe. They were disparaged as ‘Turks’ though anti-Turk was more like it. They are ‘white’, so more able to slip past immigration officials. Asians (targeting especially Chinese and Japanese) were kept out with a $200 landing fee from 1908 on. Interestingly, they did not think to hide their faith, calling themselves Mohametans, as was the nickname given to Muslims then. Often the hopeful immigrant depended on a nice official to get through, some turned back at the dock in Europe for ‘bad eyesight’ or illiteracy.
The early immigrants, like the large influx of Jews at the turn of the century, mostly had to peddle goods by foot to farmers, buying from Jewish wholesalers, often forced to sleep in the snow, sometimes disappearing, either murdered by hostile farmers or frozen/ starved to death. If they survived, they strived to open an ironmongers (hardware store) or haberdashery. Or became candymakers. There are no stories of rags-to-riches millionaires in Hogsen’s history, but many stories of successful entrepreneurs, teachers, bureaucrats, using their modest wealth to fund mosques, to help fellow Muslims immigrate or through crises, building the community, the ummah, examples of nurturing the faith, providing the material conditions for worship and following the ‘straight path’. At the same time, being good citizens and neighbors, welcoming interfaith dialogue, promoting Islam as a healthy way of living.
As the ethnic variety of Muslims increased, Albanians and Syrians were soon living and worshipping with Asian and African immigrants. The US has a very different history, where millions of Muslim Africans were enslaved and forced to convert to Christianity, only later rediscovering Islam in the civil rights movement post-WWII. Canada prides itself now in welcoming exslaves in the 19th century, though the Christian society was just as racist, and the new arrivals mostly fared badly and returned to the US after the civil war.
Immigration only changed after WWII, initially in 1947 when refugees from Europe came in large numbers as part of a new world order, a United Nations, promising an end to colonialsim and a new ethic rejecting racism. A Bosnian caught in Italy, not wanting to join the Yugoslav army, managed to get to Ottawa as part of the post-WWII invitation for farmers. In 1961, racial restrictions were abolished for immigrants, giving preference to education and work experience. Numbers increased from 5,800 in 1961 to 33,430 in 1971 – 6x, to 100,000 in 1981 – 3x, then doubling each decade to 2011, with over 1,000,000. Today’s 1,775,715 is 5% of the population, 5x more than Jews. When I go to Friday prayers at University of Toronto’s Koffler Multifaith Center, I never cease to marvel at the variety of faces in the crowded prayer hall (there are 4 services), and the fact that 400-500 Muslims are praying collectively on a university of 100,000 students — the only ones! ‘Why else are we here except to worship God and strive to follow the straight path?’ I ask myself.
British Columbia
Hogsen interviewed the Fijian president of the BCMA, Muntaz Ali. Yes, indentured Indians came to Fiji as reliable sugar cane workers, and – why not? – moved on to Canada, Ali in 1964. The most infamous attempt to immigrate via Vancouver was the refusal to allow the ship Komagata Maru, carrying 376 prospective Punjabi immigrants (mostly Sikhs but some Muslims), to land in Vancouver in 1914. It was not till 1983 that enough Muslims arrived to build the first mosque in BC, founded by Ali and immigrants from South Africa and Egypt.
Alberta
Edmonton boasts the first Canadian mosque, Al Rashid Mosque built in 1938. Peddlers could become store owners in remote fur-trading posts. One of Canada’s great women pioneers was Lebanese Hilwie Hamdon, who came to Canada in 1923 at the age of 16 to marry Ali Hamdon (41) who had established himself in Fort Chipewyan. Ali felt at home with the natives, learning Cree. Eventually they moved to Edmonton and with 22 others, built their mosque. Edmonton grew, attracting many more Muslims to Canada’s only mosque. The mosque was threatened, but Hilwie organized, fundraised, lobbied, and got the city to help move it to the Fort Edmonton Heritage Park, a 1967 Centennial project. All this paid off, producing Canada’s first Muslim (Ismaili) mayor Naheed Nenshi in 2010. Another remarkable Edmontonian who helped save the Al Rashid Mosque was Lila Fahlman (nee Ganem father Lebanese, mother Welsh), who gained her doctorate in educational psychology, and founded the World Council of Muslim Women Foundation, travelling to China to meet Muslim women in 1998.
Over and over, I read how cultured Muslim immigrants were, even if illiterate when they arrived. Education is at the heart of Islam, the command being to understand and praise God and nature, to move along the straight path, ever closer to God. The quarrels within the community attest to the diversity of traditions, yet never spilling over into violence. The original immigrants were more tolerant of differences, embracing Sunni, Shia, Ismaili, even Ahmadiyya. As the communities grew, different mosques could cater to different traditions, but the core beliefs, Ramadan, prayers, knit the fabric together. Intolerance came more from outside pressure, especially Saudi Wahhabism, and the overzealous Tabhlighi Jamaat from Pakistan, Bangladesh and southeast Asia, but Hogsen shows how the more liberal, tolerant strain endures in each community, less concerned about headscarves and dress, more about the actual beliefs.
Most immigrants ended up with small stores, barber shops, service stations, not factory workers in mass production, which is alien to Muslim traditions. Their children went/go on to be doctors, lawyers, office workers, scientists, teachers, real estate agents. The few wealthy individuals Hogsen interviewed were proud of using their wealth to help the community. No billionaire Kofflers. The unity of the ummah is not through wealth but through worship. The apartness of Muslims is solely due to refusal to make alcohol central to communication, and the rejection of mass entertainment, which is often morally compromised and eats up precious time from the more important focus on spirituality. Politically, Muslims are conservative but as anti-imperialists, anti-racists, anti-usury, concerned with social justice they often align with the NDP.
Saskatchewan
There really is a ‘little mosque on the prairies’, thanks to Muslims in Swift Current, who started a weekend Islamic school in the United Church, where the community also held Friday and Eid prayers. The minister even offered to cover the pictures of Jesus and Mary. Mohammad Afsar, from Pakistan, was moved to tears and told him the use of the facility would be enough. In 1983 they bought an unused church as the Islamic Centre of Swift, Masjid Al-Khair.
Manitoba
Ernest Abas, Lebanese, recalled that his parents married and then failed to get passage on the Titanic in 1912. he grew up on their farmstead. His parents were illiterate but taught the children their prayers and stories from the Quran. Trinidadian student Khaleel Baksh arrived in Winnipeg in 1962 and became a founder of the first mosque in 1976. As with many small communities, Muslims used friendly churches for worship, and often held their pray meetings on Sunday if necessary (not Saturday). Another common thread was/is to appeal to rich Saudi Arabia, Ghaddafi’s Libya, Zulfikar Bhutto’s Pakistan for funding.
Ontario
Ontario has the most Muslims, 7% of Ontarians, followed by 5% of Quebeckers and 5% of Albertans. Along with Syrians, early immigrants to Ontario were Albanian, though no mosque was established in Toronto till 1961. London became the hub for Muslims and is now the second largest population, with a mosque in a large brick house in 1957, since replaced by the 1964 mosque. Muslims from Toronto and Windsor would come for marriages and to settle, with Detroit providing the imam. There was a constant move back and forth to the US. Like Edmonton, the creation of the mosque was key to attract more Muslims.
Hamilton started late, with the first Pakistani student at McMaster University in 1966. Like many of the new wave of immigrants, Mohammad Afsar had lived through and survived the tragedy of the partition of India, and was an engineer. This new cohort of Muslims transformed the community, with the smarts and drive to build mosques and interact with the non-Muslim community. A small house served as the mosque in 1969 and a real mosque built in the 1970s. Summer camps and schools began to spring up, important as secular education continued to eat away at moral values.
Kingston, Windsor also developed communities, starting with a few immigrants post-WWII and growing into a mosque by the 1970s.
Toronto has the lion’s share of Muslims. 10% of Toronto’s population and 31 mosques. The first mosque was established by Albanians in a storefront in the west end in 1960 and a Presbyterian church built in 1930 was purchased in 1961 on Boustead Ave. Hogsen explains how conflicts with later immigrants often soured older mosque members. The Albanians eventually left this group and founded another mosque for themselves. The new Muslim Students Association (MSA) became a North American organization in various cities and looked to Saudi financing of mosques, which put a Wahhabi slant to worship and greater restrictions on male/ female etiquette, though never enough to prevent a modus vivendi as the ummah expanded over time.
There were Syrians in Ottawa by the beginning of the 20th century, and Pakistanis arrived starting in the late 1950s. A Pakistani Ottawan engineer managed to convincing visiting Zulfikhar Bhutto to promise him $100,000 for a mosque and he came through, the mosque opening in 1972. As is the case everywhere, a mosque becomes a lighting rod and like Toronto, 10% of Ottawans are Muslim, many Somali refugees from the 1980s.
Quebec
The preference for French immigrants to Quebec brought a continuous wave of immigrants from former French colonies Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire and others, giving Quebec a uniquely colorful community. Like Toronto the first mosque came after WWII, in 1958. There are more than 90 now in Montreal alone (vs 11 synagogues). McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies was founded in 1952, the first in Canada. Marriages were only in registered churches till Lesage’s ‘quiet revolution’, and Bill 194 in 1965 gave the Islamic Centre of Quebec civil status and the authority to conduct marriages. Similar conflicts with the new, more orthodox immigrants, the MSA and the Tablighi Jamaat caused new groups to build their own mosques, as elsewhere. There was resistance to allowing a Muslim cemetery in Montreal though it was resolved. This same resistance in Quebec City was what precipitated the worst religious mass murder in Canada in 2017, when a white extremist shot 7 Muslims at the mosque there. London Ontario also suffered this tragedy when 4 Muslims were shot in 2021.
Nova Scotia
The first Muslims were Syrian, with a Muslim cemetery founded in Truro in 1944. A Muslim organization was founded in 1966 composed of 6 doctors. A mosque was built in Dartmouth in 1971 which expanded into the Maritime Muslim Academy in 1998, with a school, their first imam Jamal Badawi, a professor at St Mary’s University. Just as few immigrants remain in the Maritimes, so Muslims came and went, mostly to London. A mosque was built in Truro and a Catholic church was refashioned as a mosque in Trenton.
There are Muslims in every province and territory. There was great excitement in 2019 when a mosque, the Yukon Muslim Society, was opened in Whitehorse, in addition to the Inuvik Masjid (Midnight Sun Mosque) and Yellowknife Shia mosque.
The organizing efforts to create a real ummah in Canada really started in the 1930s and picked up steam in the 1960s with a national organization Council of Muslim Communities of Canada, now the National Council Canadian Muslims, which is a strong lobby fighting Islamophobia in national security agencies, the CRA, policing, and education. NCCM also advocates on Canadian foreign policy related to Palestine, Afghanistan, the treatment of Uyghurs in China and the treatment of Muslims and other minorities in India. It is the only voice against Quebec’s persecution of headscarves, and sued PM Stephen Harper for calling it terrorist, forcing him to apologize. This capable advocacy in the face of continued bigotry gives Islam a presence that other religions lack. Muslims here and everywhere are the backbone of the struggle against Israel’s genocidal persecution of Palestinians.
Pakistanis outnumber other Muslim immigrants (13%), with Iranians, Moroccans, Algerians, Bangladeshi, Syrians, Afghanis and Lebanese all in 3-5% range. When and how they arrived follows the vagaries of the past two centuries of upheaval, making each Muslim’s lineage a fascinating tale. I always enjoy hearing these stories, stories of unity in diversity, unique to Islam. There are Canadian Muslims from many other nations, now, more and more Africans. I’ve met Chinese Muslims, even a Boer South African, blond and blue-eyed who ‘saw the light’ and brought along his parents into the faith too. Islam is the most universal of the great religions, cutting through race and class more than any other, and the most welcoming to converts. To be able to tell Archangel Gabriel on Judgment Day that you brought someone to the faith is a hefty weight on the scale of your good actions.
New weapons
The century of groundwork laid by our hardy forefathers/mothers spawned a remarkable educational network for the 21st century. Reviving the Islamic Spirit is a yearly conference in Toronto over the Christmas break since 2001, bringing our star thinker-activists from around the world (e.g.,Tariq Ramadan, Imran Khan, Attallah Shabazz, eldest daughter of Malcolm X) and sympathetic others (e.g., Robert Risk, Eric Margolis, Karen Armstrong, even Prime Minister Trudeau). In 1997, the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) was registered as a faith-based charity, focusing on education, community service, and volunteer engagement, with centers and schools in Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto (seven schools) and Montreal. In 2024, they opened the Canadian Islamic College in Mississauga providing an accredited Honors Bachelor of Arts. MAC also hosts yearly conferences, supplementing RIS with a more hands-on activist program.
Canada escaped the scourge of slavery, which killed millions of African Muslims to feed the greed of industrial capitalism, but American Muslims were a lifeline to the fledging Muslim movement here. Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio were important oases for Canadian Muslims in need of an imam or as waystations for future Canadian Muslims. Now, we look to many brilliant American scholars and activists who come to RIS and MAC conferences. Canadian Islamic College is modeled on Hamza Yusuf’s Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California.
Islam plays the same ‘unity in diversity’ role in the US. We take inspiration from the fact that half of US blacks have converted to Islam. From being lowly slaves to being heralds of the New World Order, not of secular globalism, but of a globalism grounded in faith, bringing all peoples of the world together in defense of peace and love of nature.
Of course, Zionist spoilers do their best to blacken these efforts, accusing us and our conferences of links with ‘terrorists’ (i.e., supporting resistance movements such as Hamas), although organizers are careful not to give the real terrorists (Israel-lovers) any rope. Islamophobia is always there, as it has been for 1400 years, in overdrive since the rise of imperialism. But history is on our side, as the other religions fail to keep the faith against secular capitalism. As any civilization declines, it is vicious in its death throes. Islam’s enduring flame is still strong in the face of genocide and the destruction of God’s creation. Our daily prayers from Canada blend with millions of others around the world 24-7, all of us facing Mecca, our focus, to beam the message up to God that not all humans are frivolous and disdainful of His majesty.
Failed gods
I came to Islam late, after a lifetime under the spell of Marx. Interestingly, Marx, for long nicknamed ‘the Moor’, started to admire Islam and the Arab world in his later years, spending his last winter seeking treatment for pleurisy in Algiers. Of course, he studied local conditions, observing the common ownership among the Arabs which the French were undoing. Colons would seize land then sell back to native for a huge profit. Colonists were more inviolable than handsome William I.
Even the poorest Moor surpasses the greatest European comedian in the art of wrapping himself in his hood and showing natural, graceful and dignified attitudes. Their social classes are mixed, some dressed pretentiously, even richly, others in rags and tatters, blouses. Such accidents, good or bad luck, do not distinguish Mohamet’s children, their absolute equality in the social intercourse is not affected; on the contrary only when demoralized, they become aware of it; as to the hatred against Christians and hope of victory over these infidels, their politicians have the same feeling of equality, not of wealth or position but of personality, a guarantee of keeping up the one, of not giving up the latter. They will go to rack and ruin without a revolutionary movement.
He marveled at the scant presence of the state: in no town elsewhere is there such laisser faire, laisser passer; police reduced to a bare minimum; unparalleled lack of embarrassment in public. For Muslims there no such thing as subordination; they are neither subjects nor citizens. There is no authority, save in politics, something which Europeans have totally failed to understand. This self-governing and ethic of sharing was alien to the capitalism he so despised. Unlike Voltaire, Kant, Hegel, etc, Marx did not welcome the destruction of this precapitalist world, nor did he promote atheism for what he recognized as a truly devout people. Islam, even at its most stagnant, was not the dead Christianity that he lampooned and dismissed in favor of secular revolution.
Marx did not live to see the error of his atheism, how his brilliant, radical critique of the social order would spawn a soulless totalitarianism. When I finally woke up to that, like Marx, I was drawn to Islam and precapitalist social formations for a key to the way forward. I’m pretty sure Marx would look at how Islam has survived the war against it by his hated capitalism, and rout for its ability to self-regulate based on a strong faith, a true brotherhood, not the familial sibling brothers, who you don’t choose, but fellow Muslims, with whom you are glad to share whatever little you have, not to exploit and profit from them.
Islam was founded in the 7th century, when all faiths – Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, nature worship – were alive and meant something, before science became destructive technology and before we were able to turn our greed and envy into weapons that are genocidal not just for us humans, but for Earth itself. Thank God He saw fit to provide the Quran as an antidote to the coming deluge. Noah is hands-down my favorite prophet. My sixth sense for the coming apocalypse, a prophet of nature’s revenge but with an olive branch promising another chance.
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