Muslims in Canada

Muslim Canadians: Demographics

Muslims constitute approximately 2% of the Canadian population (579,600), as measured in the 2001 census. This is nearly double the 1991 figure of 253,300; in fact, over the 1990s, Muslims accounted for 15% of all new immigrants. Sixty-one percent of Canadian Muslims live in Ontario; 86% live in the major metropolitan areas; over 300,000 live in the Greater Toronto region; and over 150,000 live in Montreal. Vancouver, Ottawa, and Edmonton have smaller but nonetheless significant numbers of Muslims; the latter is the city in which the first Muslim immigrants to Canada settled.

By the opening years of the 21st century, there were more than eighty mosques across the country, most of which were located in those urban centers noted above. Roughly one-third of Canadian Muslims are of South Asian background, one-third of Arab background, and one-third of other backgrounds, including African and European.

Especially since 9/11, proportionately more Muslims have made their way to Canada than to the United States, over concerns of confronting racism and Islamophobia there. Most Muslim immigrants to Canada are highly skilled professionals; one-fourth of Muslims in Canada hold university degrees, including an elevated proportion of advanced degrees. They are trained as health professionals, engineers, and business professionals.

Yet Muslim integration into the fabric of Canadian society has not been without its limitations. As in other Western nations, the welcome mat has not been universally laid out for Muslims, and despite their [Page 924]credentials, they are overrepresented among the unemployed and underemployed.

Muslims in the Canadian Media

The apparent disparities in employment for Muslims can be explained in part by the widespread diffusion of negative images of Islam. In fact, many commentators have suggested that Arabs generally and Muslims specifically may represent the last “legitimate” subjects of negative stereotypes. The media are seen by many in the Muslim Canadian community as especially complicit in the dissemination of anti-Muslim imagery through the perpetuation of narrow caricatures of Muslims as terrorists and as rejecting Canadian values.

There is a widely held belief within the Muslim Canadian community that Muslims are not represented fairly in the mass media. In a 2002 nationwide survey of some 300 Canadian Muslims of South Asian, Arab, African, and European backgrounds, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) found that 55% of respondents thought the Canadian media had become more biased since 9/11. Researchers single out the National Post as especially likely to engage in disparaging and inflammatory coverage of Islam, tending to emphasize extremist “tendencies.”

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