All-Muslim suburb built in Toronto.

I guess multiculturalism works best if you isolate yourself. No assimilation into Canadian culture here, please.

Giving Peace a chance in Muslim suburbia

A speaker in the parking lot crackles and broadcasts the Arabic call to prayer. Suddenly, silent life fills the dark streets. Men dressed in the long white shalwar camise of their native Pakistan and women in head scarfs emerge from their brick homes.

Welcome to Peace Village, Canada's first Islamic subdivision, where all 260 homes belong to members the Ahmadiyya sect, who flooded to Canada in the 1980s after persecution in Pakistan. It looks ordinary, with basketball nets and minivans in the driveways, until you notice the street signs: Mahmood Crescent, Ahmadiyya Avenue and Noor-Ud-Din Court.

The Ahmadiyya say they don't mean to isolate themselves, and they send their children to public school. Still, the nation's "cultural mosaic" is fairly monochrome in this spot: Teston Road Public School, which opened last month next to the mosque, is about 80% Muslim, and the school provides its gym on Fridays at lunchtime so the kids can kick off their running shoes, bow low toward Mecca and pray.

In his Toyota Sequoia V8, Mr. Ahmad gives a tour of the place. We take Bashir Street (named for his father) and Abdus Salam Street, named for the first Muslim Nobel laureate, as he speaks of his big plans: an Islamic reference library and doubling the mosque's size, to 40,000 square feet.

"Over here is going to be a TV station," he says. (Already a special cable to each home feeds Muslim television from an audio-visual room at the base of the minaret). "Then over here we're going to have a big huge guest house."

In his office, Mr. Ahmad points to other projects: "This is my Brampton mosque. This is in Cornwall. I have architects and engineers working for me freelance. This is the Calgary mosque."

Accommodating Islam is second nature at the school. Some students are fasting during Ramadan, which ends with the feast of Eid'l Fitr on Oct. 12. "Some try to fast, they get weak and headaches, we let them rest on the health bed," the principal says. "We haven't had meet-the-teacher night and we're not going to have it until after Ramadan, out of respect for the parents."

"You ask, 'Why did you move?' they say, 'I wanted to be near the mosque.' It's good. Multiculturalism is amazing."

The Alonzis also miss Teston United Church, demolished as the region expands a nearby road and developers expand Peace Village. "I was standing there and crying," Mrs. Alonzi says. "I said, 'God, are you not listening?' But nobody listened, and they tore it down." Their son built them a wooden model of the church, to keep the memory alive. She also bought a knotted rag rug from the church at auction, for $75.

The appeal of faith-based suburbs is simple: People feel more comfortable among their own kind. Maqbool Bajwa immigrated to Toronto from Pakistan in 1987 with his four brothers, his mother and father. Immigration Canada let in his father under the business investor category. The family's first home was in Toronto's troubled Jane-Finch area. In 1997, Maqbool Bajwa bought a house in Brampton in Toronto's western suburbs. A year later he sold it and bought in Peace Village. Family bought adjoining houses.

"The mosque was nearby, the street names were all from our community," he says, sitting in an office at MB Computer Depot, a new store his brothers started in an Ahmadiyyaowned plaza near Peace Village. "I love it. When I see Ahmadiyya Avenue, it makes me proud, no question about it. Plus we've got the Vaughan Mills [a new mall], we've got the Wonderland and hopefully the subway coming. I can wear my shalwar camise and walk from home to the mosque without someone looking at me funny for what I'm wearing. It just gives me the absolute comfort of being home."

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sphere: Related Content