From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Bosnian Muslims/Paul Robert Magocsi
Whether or not they are committed believers in Islam, Bosnian Muslims in Canada have been sustained as a community largely through the religious structures that they have created. During the 1950s and 1960s, when their numbers were still small, communal prayers were held in private homes and often, as in the case with the group in Vancouver, with Muslims of other ethnic backgrounds. In 1973 Bosnian Muslims who generally identified as Croatians founded in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke their own Croatian mosque. This group still functions with about 120 families in what is now called the Bosnian Islamic Centre. While this group was still Croatian-oriented, it frequently spoke out against the non-democratic methods of Tito’s Yugoslavia, which was accused of practising discrimination against both Muslims and Croat Catholics.
As the number of Bosnian Muslim immigrants increased during the 1970s and 1980s, those who were not inclined towards a Croatian national identity set out to create their own religious and social organization. In 1982 a Toronto businessman, Hasan Karachi, brought Bosnian Muslims to worship together with Albanian Muslims. The relationship was short-lived, however, largely because of different political attitudes towards Yugoslavia. The Albanians were critical of Tito’s regime, while the Bosnians wished to maintain cordial relations with a government that at the very least recognized their existence as a distinct people. Hence, in 1984, the Bosnians left to form what today is called the Gazi Husrefbeg Bosnian Association. Its headquarters in Etobicoke house the Bosnian-Canadian Community Association and accommodate a mosque as well as a large facility for social gatherings. The Bosnian Association has been particularly attractive to the refugees who have arrived since 1992 and who before the war were economically prosperous and secular in outlook.
With the largest concentration of Bosnian Muslims anywhere in Canada, the Metropolitan Toronto area has for some time had the most intensive social and cultural as well as religions life. In the 1960s, Daut Secerbegovi operated a nightclub called the Bosna Klub situated in downtown Toronto. It was a gathering place for Yugoslavs of all backgrounds and provided the best of folk entertainment from Bosnia. Today, the social life of Bosnian Muslims in southern Ontario (Metropolitan Toronto, London, Hamilton) centres around zabavas, communal get-togethers of several hundred people, with folk music, dancing, and food. These events usually begin with a guest speaker from Bosnia-Herzegovina or sometimes a prominent Bosnian Muslim visitor from the diaspora. These are usually casual, family-style gettogethers, although they become more festive if held on the occasion of an important religious festival like Eid Ramadam (the celebration of the end of the fast of Ramadam). Religious events are commemorated throughout the year, although the number of strict, observant followers of Islam in the Bosnian Muslim community remains small. The religious events that are celebrated are also social and cultural occasions that for many in the community are an opportunity to assert their identity.
The recent war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the displacement of tens of thousands of people from their homes prompted the formation of relief organizations, two of which are in the Toronto area and one in Montreal. The largest and most active has been the Bosansko-Kanadsko Humanitarno Udru enie (Bosnian-Canadian Relief Association), which since its establishment in Etobicoke in 1993 has helped newly arrived refugees find jobs and places to live, sent clothes, food, and medical supplies to the war-torn homeland, and set up communications facilities, such as a short-wave radio service and telephone news service, to reach people in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as to publicize the tragic events of that land to the outside world. Since their establishment, the various relief and community groups have organized public protests and lobbied the Canadian federal government on behalf of Bosnian Muslim refugees. These efforts contributed to a dramatic success at the outset of 1993, when, through the auspices of the Red Cross, between 550 and 700 Bosnian Muslims were brought to Canada from the concentration camp in Manjaca (northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina) and eventually settled in cities across the country, including Ottawa and Quebec City in the east and Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton in the west.
