page_title: Islam in Canada
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Islam in Canada / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Uniform hat insignia for Canadian military Muslim chaplains.
context_page_description: According to Canada's 2011 National Household Survey, there were 1,053,945 Muslims in Canada, or about 3.2%, of the population, making Islam the second largest religion in the country after Christianity. In the Greater Toronto Area, 7.7% of the population is Muslim, and in Greater Montreal, 6% of the population is Muslim. A majority of Canada's Muslim population follows Sunni Islam, while a significant minority adhere to the Shia and Ahmadiyya branches.
context_section_description: Four years after Canada's founding in 1867, the 1871 Canadian Census found 13 European Muslims among the population.  The first Muslim organization in Canada was registered by immigrants from Lebanon living in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1934 in. The first Canadian mosque was constructed in Edmonton in 1938, when there were approximately 700 European Muslims in the country. The building is now part of the museum at Fort Edmonton Park. The years after World War II saw a small increase in the Muslim population. However, Muslims were still a distinct minority. It was only after the removal of European immigration preferences in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Muslims began to arrive in significant numbers.
  Bosniaks and Albanian Muslims were the founders of Jami Mosque, the first mosque in Toronto in 1968, whose readjustment into masjid (originally an old Catholic school building) occurred on June 23, 1973. The mosque was readjusted for the Bosniaks, with the support of the local Christians.  Later, with the action of University of Toronto professor Qadeer Baig, it was purchased by Asian Muslims, while Albanians and Bosniaks later founded the Albanian Muslim Society and Bosanska džamija (Bosnian Mosque) respectively. The oldest mosque in Toronto, with the oldest minaret in Ontario built in Osmanic style is in Etobicoke, part of the Bosnian Islamic Centre.
  The first Madrasa (Islamic seminary) in North America, Al-Rashid Islamic Institute was established in Cornwall, Ontario in 1983 to teach  Hafiz and Ulama  and focuses on the traditional Hanafi school of thought. The Seminary was established by Mazhar Alam, originally from Bihar, India, under the direction of his teacher the leading Indian Tablighi scholar Muhammad Zakariya Kandhlawi. Due to its proximity to the US border city of Massena the school has historically had a high percentage of American students. Their most prominent graduate, Muhammad Alshareef completed his Hifz in the early 1990s then went on to form the AlMaghrib Institute.
  According to the Canadian Census of 1971 there were 33,000 Muslims in Canada. In the 1970s large-scale non-European immigration to Canada began. This was reflected in the growth of the Muslim community in Canada. In 1981, the Census listed 98,000 Muslims. The 1991 Census indicated 253,265 Muslims. By 2001, the Islamic community in Canada had grown to more than 579,000. Estimates for the Census 2006 pointed to a figure of 800,000. As of May 2013, Muslims account for 3.2% of the total population, with a total of over a million, and Islam has become the fastest growing religion in Canada.
caption: Uniform hat insignia for Canadian military Muslim chaplains.
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