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The Globe and Mail has a timely article on a makeshift mosque in a Toronto neighborhood. The article talks about a basement mosque in a building in Regent Park, a social housing conglomerate. Regent Park is now being revitalized, with old buildings being torn down, and new ones (mostly high rises) coming up. This mosque will have to go with the building.
The mosque members are at a loss. Their basement place of worship was free of charge. They didn't have to pay any rent. With the new buildings coming up, they will have to either pay rent for any new space, or outright buy the property to house their mosque.
But, they are already coming up with excuses. "People living in this [area] are low-income and can't afford to buy space," says [mosque] member Shahan Ahia.
So how did these Muslims manage to have the space rent-free in the first place?
Here is part of the answer. According to The Globe and Mail article;
Members of the Khadem centre [KPA: Notice that the space is called both a mosque and a centre] remain skeptical that they will get help from TCHC [Toronto Community Housing Corp.]. For them, the five-year-old centre is not simply a place to pray. On weekends, more than 60 children come to the centre to learn English, Arabic, math and computer skills or to be mentored by university-aged Muslims about being a good Muslim and getting a good education.This "centre", which functions as an all-purpose Islamic centre, most likely gets its funding from various levels of the government. It likely gets it rent money as well as funding for the several activities described above. To get its government funding, its sales pitch is probably:
- It teaches ESL [English as a Second Language] (good for assimilation)
- It teaches special skills like computers (good for assimilation via getting youth career and job ready)
- It maintains a heritage language component by teaching Arabic to children (good for multiculturalism)
- It keeps the young well-monitored by having adults supervise ethnic-centered activities (good for multiculturalism)
All these are 100% guarantees that it will get government funding. That is how many other cultural centers acquire their monies. Scroll down at Canadian Immigration Reform Blog's list of agencies which receive money from the government. For example in 2008, the Muslim Community Services received $4,115,064.00, and the Afghan Women’s Counselling and Integration Community Support got $512,006.00 (Canadian dollars).
With the right project and the right proposal (easy to do with many helping hands out there), there is no reason for the Khadm Mosque/Centre to worry about closing down.
But, of course the problem is bigger than receiving government money. The problem is that this center has already declared, openly in this Globe and Mail article, that it is a Islam-centric center. So, the government is funding young Muslims to get a Muslim education, through language and religious training.
I wonder how many more "basement" mosques there are, how many of them are fully funded by government monies? And how many such stories it will take before Canadians realize who and what they are funding?