Aisha Raja is rarely hassled on the University of Toronto’s downtown campus or at home in diverse Markham, Ont. It’s the space in-between – she takes a subway, light rail, and bus to and from school – that is troublesome. When she commutes, she’s not a political science student, a campus activist or a tea store employee. She is reduced to a young woman in a hijab.
“I’ve had random people yell really rude things sometimes, like, ‘Oh, you bloody Muslims!’ and you obviously can’t engage with those kind of people in that time,” said Ms. Raja, the 20-year-old daughter of Pakistani immigrants.
Her experiences indicate that, for some young Canadian Muslims, an “us and them” mentality persists in their home country.
A 2006 Environics poll of 2,045 Canadians bears this out, finding that of those who had rarely or never had contact with Muslims, 49 per cent held a negative view of them. The large majority (70 per cent) of those who were “often” in contact with Muslims had positive views of them.
But regardless of what other Canadians think of them, it’s getting harder to ignore Islam, and young Muslims, in Canada. Islam is Canada’s fastest-growing major religion. According to a Statistics Canada estimate, the Muslim population will soar to 2.9 million by 2031 from its 2006 base of 884,000 adherents.
A population shift alone may not be enough to close the gap between the solitudes. Ms. Raja is optimistic that attitudes will change, but said the responsibility also lies with her and her fellow Muslims.
“I guess people gravitate towards their own community, but for me, I feel like it’s extremely important to engage with the larger Toronto community,” she said.
High-profile stories, including the Toronto 18 terrorism bust, the murder of Mississauga, Ont., teenager Aqsa Parvez by her father and brother, and tales of radical youth travelling overseas on jihadist missions, have left many non-Muslims with a skewed understanding of the religion – a faith whose diversity, especially within Canada, is immense, with differences across sect, ethnocultural or national origin, and levels of adherence.
The same narratives also make some Muslims pessimistic about engaging in community work while representing themselves as Muslims, Rizwan Mohammad said. “They felt almost like, ‘We’re fighting a losing battle.’”
In 2009, Mr. Mohammad set out on a two-year cross-Canada project with the Canadian Council for Muslim Women to better connect young Muslims with their communities. The more than 800 Muslim youth who participated in workshops shared one gripe in particular: their portrayal in the media as an isolated, alienated and – in the case of females – oppressed group.
Although Sana Rokhsefat serves on the University of Toronto’s student union, takes karate classes and wears the same trendy clothes as her peers, she still must battle those who equate her decision to wear the hijab with patriarchal forces in Islam.
She said her Iranian-born parents were surprised when she chose to wear the headscarf in junior high, so soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“There’s nothing about me that is oppressed. To have people think that about me is very disheartening,” said Ms. Rokhsefat, 20.
Dispelling the widely held belief that Canadian and Islamic values clash can be a burden for Muslim youth: they often have to correct both their parents and their peers.
Adam Koshin’s Somalia-born parents enrolled him in Islamic schools in Calgary and Regina until he was 13 because they feared he’d “meet the wrong people, start doing the wrong stuff” at a secular public school, he said.
Now 15, with a circle of mostly non-Muslim friends, he still prays regularly and visits his local mosque at least once a week on his own.
Leaving the Islamic school cocoon was a shock to him, though. His friends’ views of Islam were shaped by sensational media stereotypes.
“They think we’re all terrorists and we’re all waiting for 40 wives in the afterlife. All the stuff from the TV. It’s ridiculous,” he said.
