Source: Vaughan today

It’s 8:45 on an August night and the sidewalks of Ahmadiyya Avenue are illuminated with the vibrant colours of women and children in shalwar kameez. The unisex South-Asian cultural garb, traditionally worn in Pakistan, comes in an array of colours, though men generally wear white. While many nearby residents are getting their kids ready for bed, the members of this small community are just now emerging from their homes and advancing toward the local mosque to pray and break fast.

It is the holy month of Ramadan.

When dusk falls, the only audible sounds are the call to prayer, or azaan, mixed with occasional peals of children’s laughter. As the azaan plays quietly (it must abide with local noise bylaws), men, women and youth fill the streets. There’s not a car in sight.

Ahmadiyya Avenue is not in some far-off city. It is part of a subdivision in Vaughan.

This is Peace Village, a predominantly Muslim community in Maple. Just north of the artificial mountain of Canada’s Wonderland, the stainless steel dome and white minarets of the mosque are among the few other Vaughan constructs to pierce the sky.

A search for peace is what brought Ahmadiyya faithful to Canada from their homeland — primarily Pakistan — where they faced regular persecution by mainstream Muslims who consider their differing beliefs heretical. Peace Village was the culmination of a dream.

But then, shortly after it was constructed, 9-11 occurred. The destruction wrought on the U.S. by fundamentalist Muslim extremists would impact innocents in places far beyond the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Virginia or the field near Shanksville, Pa., where the last of the passenger planes they had hijacked crashed.

The War on Terror swiftly followed, its tentacles reaching far beyond the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq — all the way to Western societies.

Mass travel, particularly by air, became tightly controlled. Often, Western Muslims found themselves met with suspicion and their assemblies, especially in mosques, were severely scrutinized. Islam itself was placed under the microscope. There were stories of Muslims — and even those who resembled Muslims, such as Sikhs — being harassed everywhere from convenience stores to airports.

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http://www.vaughantoday.ca/blog/2011/09/12/finding-peace-in-the-village/