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by Mohammed El Ansari MONTREAL (IslamOnline) - Muslim students at one of Canada's largest English speaking universities, McGill University, have been deprived from having permanent prayer areas and will be forced to abandon their current prayer room, which will be used for administrative purposes next May. McGill University which was founded in the 1820s in Canada's second largest metropolitan city, Montreal, has over 1500 Muslim students out of a total of about 25,000. Muslim students have been requesting a permanent prayer space since the early 1980s, but have instead been given temporary areas that are eventually denied after a short while. Many Canadians take pride in McGill University, some equaling it to Harvard University in rank. In fact, with the start of this year's fall semester; T-shirts were sold at McGill's gates with the banner "Harvard is America's McGill". Karl Sharif, head of the McGill Muslim Students' Association (MMSA), told IslamOnline that Muslim students were given a prayer area that allows room for a maximum of 35 - 40 students in October of 1998. However, in a meeting last week with the Dean of Student Activities, Barry Levvy, the MMSA were told they should give up the place by next May, after which, the area will be allocated for staff offices. The current prayer area is situated in the Religious Studies department. "The Dean seems to be sympathetic to our cause but the problem is seemingly out of his hands," Sharif told IslamOnline. Sherif Al Madawi, a Muslim postgraduate student in medicine told IslamOnline that for him the prayer area was more than a worship space, it also plays a large role for Muslim students to get know each other better and feel the warmth of Islam. Al Madawi says it also represents an educational center, "There is a fairly rich library containing books on Islamic theology and history, and lectures are held systematically to educate Muslims and non-Muslims in Islam." The room cannot hold more than 40 students at a time, but students are always found there at prayer times. They also use the area to socialize during the non-prayer times. The head of the MMSA, Sharif, told IslamOnline that the university administration seems unable to understand the centrality of daily prayers in the life of the Muslim student, "For a true Muslim to succeed in his or her academic life as well as all walks of life daily prayers should be an integral part of his or her daily routine." Muslim female students are provided a much smaller prayer area in the Islamic Studies Institute of McGill. Almost every other major Canadian university has a permanent prayer area for its Muslim students. The McGill Daily, an on-campus student newspaper, ran an article last week supporting the Muslim students' cause, saying, "Imagine coming back to university one fall, only to discover that space for all social activities on campus was taken away because the university deemed that there was not enough room. This is what happened to Muslim students this fall," the paper exclaimed. The McGill Daily added, "for over twenty years, Muslim students have been lobbying the university for a permanent prayer room, and for the same services offered by the McGill Chaplainry to Christian and Jewish students. But to date, McGill has not provided permanent space to the Muslim community, instead providing only temporary spaces." |
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