For Dr. Emdad Khan, the South Nepean Muslim Community has always been about more than providing a place for Ottawa’s Muslims to pray. The non-profit has also given them a setting to build a community.
“Muslims need to socialize somewhere and they also need spiritual exercise,” Khan said. “You can pray at home, but this encourages people to do it in a group and network.”
The community group has bounced around between a number of venues in recent years, but it now has a place to call home as it opened a brand new 1,500-square-metre mosque to worshippers on Woodroffe Avenue on Dec. 18. The SNMC Masjid started holding services in its three-level prayer room, while contractors worked to finish the rest of the building. Once fully completed, the facility will have a library, fitness areas and a special room to prepare bodies for funerals.
It will also have two multi-purpose halls that can each hold 250 people and can be transformed into basketball courts. The spaces will be available for anyone to rent and the mosque’s neighbors will get a discount on them, Khan said. The community group bought the property from the city in 2009 and broke ground on the project in 2012. Khan said the mosque will cost around $7 million and has completely been funded by donations. More than 50,000 people from across the country donated to the initiative.
Khan emigrated from Bangladesh in 1997 and started the organization in 2006 after gathering with groups of other Muslims in their homes. His wife, Asma, first came up with the idea to build the mosque to bring the community together. “All of the activities we did in different locations we can hold in our own place now,” Khan said. The organization offers youth and family counselling, as well as job services for new immigrants.
Kahn said the organization and mosque provide a much needed service for the area’s growing Muslim population. There are now more than 1 million Muslims in Canada and they have become the fastest growing religious group in the country, according to the 2011 National Household Survey.
Kahn estimates there are between 80,000 and 100,000 Muslims in Ottawa and around 10,000 in Barrhaven. In addition to providing a community for new Muslim immigrants, the community group also works towards integrating them into Canadian society, Kahn said. “We are Muslims, but we are part of the Canadian identity as well,” he said. “You can be a good Muslim and a good Canadian citizen, too. Our prophet himself was a migrant from Mecca to Medina.”