Muslims and Sikhs might well envy that vibe. But Buddhism is more than an odd case—it shows that even a fast-growing religion can avoid rubbing Canadians the wrong way. The Buddhist population increased 84 per cent between 1991 and the 2001 national census. Still, that left the total Buddhist population at only about 300,000, or around one per cent of the population—far too small for most Canadians to have anything beyond fleeting direct contact with the religion. Even so, Buddhism’s favourability rating of 57 per cent is four points higher than Judaism, a religion with much deeper roots in Canada. Buddhism was the only religion, including Christianity, for which more than half of people who said they don’t have a friend of that faith held a favourable opinion of it anyway.
Even among those who profess a broad acceptance of other religions, the prospect of one of your children marrying someone from an unfamiliar background can be a test of tolerance. On this delicate question, though, the poll suggests a paradox. Although only 28 per cent said they have a generally favourable opinion of Islam, fully 39 per cent declared that they would find it acceptable for one of their children to marry a Muslim. The pattern follows for the other minority faiths: Canadians surveyed were more likely to say they would approve of one of their kids marrying a follower of a given religion than tended to view that religion favourably. So while only 30 per cent view Sikhs favourably, 39 per cent wouldn’t object to a child marrying one. Similarly, 41 per cent have a favourable opinion of Hinduism, but 46 per cent would find their child’s marriage to a Hindu acceptable.
That pattern might signal an intriguing instinct to respect personal choice in marriage over misguided generalizations about religions. Still, the numbers hardly suggest open-armed tolerance: with respect to all three of Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism, less than half of those surveyed said they would find it acceptable for one of their children to marry a follower of those religions. For the marriage question, the results again suggest the usual stratification: Christianity is by far most widely accepted, followed by Judaism and Buddhism, with Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism facing the most negative feelings. A resounding 83 per cent would accept a child marrying a Christian, 53 per cent a Buddhist, and 56 per cent a Jew.
Overall, the findings suggest minority religions aren’t getting a fair shake from the majority. But there remain legitimate questions, even misgivings, about the relationship between mainstream believers and fringe extremists. Outsiders, including journalists, sometimes have trouble gauging how many Sikhs support groups that have sometimes resorted to terrorism in their quest to carve a separate state out of India. Earlier this month, for instance, portraits of the assassins of former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi were reportedly on display in Surrey, B.C., at celebrations of Vaisakhi, the birth of Sikhism, and the images even appeared on T-shirts. Palbinder Shergill responds to questions about this sort of issue by making the simple, but fundamental, point that not everything a particular Sikh espouses should reflect on Sikhism as a whole.
Muslim groups also face a minefield of image challenges, which often flow from international affairs rather than domestic life. Gardee admits, for example, his organization’s campaign urging the federal government to bring home Omar Kahdr might convey the wrong impressions to some Canadians. After all, Khadr, the Canadian being held by the U.S. at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, is the son of Ahmed Said Khadr, who was an al-Qaeda financier before he was killed in a gun battle in Pakistan in 2003. Other members of the Khadr family have made outrageous public comments. “Yes, some of the things his family have said have been troubling and outright disturbing,” Gardee said. “But as a Canadian citizen he still has rights. He’s a Canadian citizen and he’s a Muslim. That puts him squarely within our mandate to deal with.”
The problem of how to project a moderate face of Islam to a wider Canadian public is a pressing challenge. Within disparate Muslim communities—and the religion is anything but monolithic—the nature of mosque leadership is a subject of sometimes fierce debate. In fact, that argument is currently raging at Ottawa’s largest mosque, just a few minutes drive west of Parliament Hill. An imam recruited last year from Egypt to preach at the mosque is regarded by some who pray there as not fluent enough in English and too out of touch with modern Canadian society for the job. Others say he needs more time to find his place.
Karim Karim, a communications professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, recently released a report based on extensive surveys and focus group sessions in Canada, the U.S. and Britain that found Muslims in all three countries yearn for imams who better understand the West. “There was a lot of admiration for leaders who were engaging in issues of youth, poverty, employment, women’s issues,” Karim told Maclean’s, “rather than just knowing the theology and being able to recite the Quran.”
Perhaps a new generation of Muslim leaders more attuned to Canadian sensibilities can help bridge the obvious gaps in understanding. Karim points to negative connotations that have built up around a handful of loaded terms. According to him, sharia is a “very malleable, very diverse” set of ethics and values about leading a Muslim life—not a rigid legal code. He describes a fatwa as an “informed opinion by a learned scholar”—not a death edict. And Karim says most Muslims think of jihad as “a daily struggle to be a good Muslim.” But he adds, “It would be disingenuous on my part to say that, no, the other side does not exist. It does exist—the taking up of arms for a cause of justice.”
His willingness to try to explain details, convey nuances, even underline contradictions—it all suggests that Karim craves dialogue on a level the Angus Reid poll suggests too few Canadians are ready for. Even Grenville, who has long experience tracking all sorts of opinions, finds the landscape of attitude toward unfamiliar faiths bleak. “This runs counter to all we espouse,” he said. “We need to face up to the reality of it.” No doubt leaders of the fast-growing, little-understood religious minorities need to consider the image they project. But the rest of Canadians might try a little soul-searching, too. For a country that often boasts of modern identity based on acceptance of diversity, this poll suggests that’s still a goal to strive toward rather than an achieved reality.
Angus Reid’s online poll was conducted from April 14 to April 15, 2009. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20. The results were statistically weighted for education, age, gender and region to ensure a sample representative of the adult population of Canada.
