Canadian Muslim Population Census for 2001

As-Salaamu alaikum!
Dear brothers and sisters,
On Tuesday, May 13, in the morning at 07:30 AM different faith groups' representatives showed up at Statistics Canada office in Downtown Toronto. On my way to the office, I assumed I could predict easily the results for the Muslim population of Canada before they were released in the office then to the media and the public. I had already checked a few days before with a few brothers and sisters and leaders in our community regarding the numbers they had in mind and we also discussed that issue in the council of Imams and the Coalition of Muslim Organizations of Toronto (COMO).

It was a very nice and well organized meeting and briefing, but to my surprise the numbers were much lower than what I was expecting. I was thinking at that time, "May be a lot of our brothers and sisters did not care filling up those forms we got in the mail - or distributed by people who knocked on our doors and gave them to us on 2001- "Where is the 1 Million Canadian Muslim?" I asked myself "Was it one of those exaggerations?"

Well the numbers could not have gone to any other faith list except to either to "Muslim" or "No Religion" categories. The last category has indeeed increased to 16% of the population. When I worked as a volunteer chaplain in the hospitals, I used to check the Muslim list of patients as well as "No Religion list" in order to find Muslim residents. Unfortunately, many of us still fear to reveal our faith may be because of fear, mistrust...Allah knows best!

The official numbers for the Muslim Population for 2001 were as follows:

In Canada: 579,645 Muslims out of a population of 29,639,030 that is 2%. A big growth due to mainly immigration almost 128.9% (253,300 in 1991)
In Ontario: 352,530 Muslims out of a population of 11,285,550 that is 3.12%
In Toronto (meaning from Burlington to Ajax): 254,110 Muslims out of a population of 4,647,955 that is also 73% of the Muslim population of Ontario (which is 61% of the Muslim population of Canada). Toronto alone has 44% of the Canadian Muslim Population.

New Facts:
* The amazing thing here is that the Muslim population has the youngest median age in all denominations. It is 28.1 years.

* Roman Catholics are: 43.2%
* No religion: 16,2%
* United Church: 9.6%
* Anglican: 6.9%
* Muslims: 2%

You can check with your Statistics Canada office in your city - or the internet at www.statcanada.ca -if you're interested and actually you should be aware of these numbers because it means a lot for the future planning, budgetting, education and government programs and elections.
Ottawa for instance has 41,720 Muslims and Hamilton has 12,880 Muslims according to the Census.

Was-Salaamu alaikum!

Hamid Slimi, Imam
International Muslims Organization
http://www.imooftoronto.com
imam[at]imooftoronto.com