Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
That's a difficult one. In a back of the napkin analysis I did last year, I noted that comparing the total size of the Islamic population in Ottawa with the number of active mosques in the city and the amount of traffic that emerges around them does suggest that only a small number of Muslims in Ottawa go to mosque regularly, although that may not be saying much.. from what I gather from my limited knowledge of theology, private prayers in your own home is more of a thing in Muslim tradition than in Jewish or Christian tradition.
Anecdotally most Canadian Muslims I know personally aren't particularly religious. There are three Muslims in my division at work and I couldn't help but notice they were all eating at our Monday breakfast meeting even though it's Ramadan right now. But anecdotes are just anecdotes, so...
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The vast majority of Muslims I know could be said to be fairly secular in public life. Though most do observe Ramadan to some degree, and don't eat pork or drink alcohol. But the women don't "cover up" and will generally dress western, nor do they ask for prayer time or prayer rooms at work. Some of them even bring their kids to the office Christmas party. In a sense they remind me of my parents' generation Catholics who only had a few observable traits outside of the home and church: stuff like saying grace before every meal and not eating meat on Fridays (later scaled down to Good Friday only).
Jews I grew up with were also like this.
That said, out of all of the religious people who are more devout than this and demand a higher level of accommodation for their faith, Muslims do make up a disproportionate share of those I have known. Second place would probably go to Jehovah's Witnesses.
In both cases we're only talking about relatively small numbers of course, but it's still noticeably more than other groups where the number is generally zero.