There is no such thing as "Muslim Community"

Submitted by Amir Sani (Canada), Nov 1, 2011 at 14:31

The main problem with such studies by non-muslims is that it completely ignores an important fact: Even in muslim societies, religion plays a secondary role to culture in general. The idea that a unified interpretation of Islam and Quran plays a central role in every aspect of Muslim life regardless of his/her national origin, is not accurate. A Moroccan, A Turk, A Pakistani, and an Indonesian are all Muslims and share the same faith, but their culture is as far from each other than a Christian swede is from a Chriatian Brazilian.

For that reason in Canada as well as most other countries, cultural and religious organizations are formed mostly around ethnic groups; e.g. Pakistani mosque, Iranians mosque, Jaffari Mosque etc. There is no unified muslim community in Canada. What you have is a muslim pakistani community, a muslim Egyptian community, a muslim Iranian community etc. In many cases their differences are significant, and one could imagine their responses to this survey would be quite different as well.

That's also another reason that national organizations such as Canadian Islamic Congress or CAIR Canada have also reduced to pure obscurity. The reason is that they do not really have a constituency for support. There is no Canadian Muslim community.

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