CANADA: A RISING MUSLIM COMMUNITY
A Beacon for Muslim Canadians ISNA Canada and, by extension, the ISNA Canada Center are trusts for all Muslim Canadians. BY HINA MIRZA
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ohammad Ashraf, who served as director, director general and then secretary general of ISNA Canada during 1979-2011, fully appreciates the opportunity that God gave him to play a central role in establishing the ISNA Canada Center. He says, “I assisted and guided the conception, planning, organizational and feasibility studies and took this project to the finish line. I was very fortunate to be able to work with many talented and dedicated community members during my tenure at ISNA. When I accepted appointment as director in April 1979, the ISNA Canada Zonal Office in Toronto was operating from a one-room rental office. In 1988 we moved from that office into our present seven-acre location in Mississauga. In between, we had spent almost 15 years in semi-detached houses on Beverly Street —
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the Muslim House — that we had purchased in 1983 through financing provided by the Islamic Cooperative Housing Corporation (ICHC), a brainchild of Mahmoud Rashdan, a former secretary general of ISNA in the United States.” Ashraf recounts some of the challenges he faced while establishing ISNA Canada projects. “Initially,” he says, “the ICHC board did not take my suggestion seriously to buy the Beverly Street property. However, persistence and perseverance paid off. ISNA Canada purchased the building in late 1983 and we moved into it during early December of that year.” There was also resistance from community members and the board of directors to new project ideas. One example was the setting up of the interest-free housing project in Canada. He says that Rashdan, who visited Toronto in August 1979 to give him some orientation for managing the zonal office, emphasized the need to organize this housing project in Toronto along the same lines
as they had used during the late 1970s in Plainfield, Ind. He recalls, “From September 1979 to September 1980, I presented the Indiana Model in the Greater Toronto Area and at some mosques in Ontario; however, it never really got off the ground. People were skeptical at first, but I finally convinced some community members.” Raising funds, he says, “for a project like the ISNA Canada Center was always a challenge. ISNA’s own ICHC, then under the direction of Pervez Nasim, was there to help ISNA pay the bills during construction. This was another Rashdan vision — having our own financial institutions to support our projects.” A major challenge was getting the City of Mississauga to rezone the property. Ashraf says, “At the time of purchase, our lawyer had erroneously assured us that the property was zoned for a place of worship. Later we found out from the city that we required rezoning. This was a very difficult battle, as the city was opposed to having an Islamic center at that location. We had to take the fight to the Ontario Municipal Board, where we prevailed. Although this was a very trying time for ISNA Canada, it was also a beautiful example of the community’s
ISLAMIC HORIZONS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015