Case Study 10: Interpretive Inquiry Into Muslim Students’ Elementary School Experiences In Canada

While Canada enjoys an international reputation as a culturally diverse state that is largely welcoming to newcomers, the fact is that Canada has not escaped the often contentious debates surrounding the social integration of Muslim communities seen elsewhere, especially since the world-altering events of the 11th of September 2001. Since then, concerns regarding the integration of Muslims in Canada have flared up around the use of religious law in family-based disputes in Ontario in 2005, over homegrown violent extremism both by Islamists (e.g., the “Toronto 18” arrests in 2006) and White supremacists (e.g., the mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec in 2017 ), over controversies and the legal battle surrounding the wearing of the niqab during the oath of citizenship, and over the admission of Syrian refugees during the 2015 federal election campaign (McCoy et al., 2016, p. 10). This indicates that perhaps not all immigrants feel equally welcomed in Canadian society. As Jeffrey Reitz (2009) has acknowledged, some of these debates have mirrored what has been seen in other Western states: “The questions in Canada as elsewhere have focused on religion, whether certain religious minorities have values, beliefs or practices that are difficult to integrate into Canadian society because they clash with Canadian ideas about gender equality or secularism in public institutions” (p. 9).