Jami Omar

Present Situation
In Ottawa, the Muslim population is significant and has been established for more than 30 years. It is also rapidly growing across all ethno-cultural groups. Besides the reality of diversity, the unity in the Muslim community appears to be slanted along ethnic lines. As a result, we have not been able to undertake any significant large scale project across the region. The various dispersed groups struggle through to address more immediate needs of establishing localized musallas than working from a broad perspective. This has impacted us largely from formulating and executing visionary projects to bring the community and the youth together. If we continue on the same path, a decade from today, we should not get surprised to see that the community does not have a single well designed facility that could cater to the needs of our youth, adults and elderly. 

In Islam, performing our salaah at Masjid in congregation is not only required, it is considered as a sign of one’s faith. According to a Hadith of Rasool (SAW):  “You be the witness of a person’s true Imaan when you see him frequent the Masjid”. Following this tradition, in old countries, people typically go to a near-by Masjid for worship only. 

In this country of ours, due to numerous reasons, majority of people do not go or want to come to Masjid just for prayers only. Unfortunately, over time, this trend is expected to get worsened. Consequently, we will certainly negate on our religious duty to go to Masjid and further deprive ourselves of the tremendous benefit and reward. 

If we want to see our children nurture in an Islamic environment, we need to look after their social aspects as well. They need a place where they can socialize after the prayer is done and play when the madrasa is over. We experience that it is difficult to reserve suitable other local facilities multiple times per week where we can maintain proper environment. Additionally, the available facilities are becoming cost prohibitive and inaccessible when we need. 

As increasing number of teenagers enter into marriage age groups, our families struggle to find a reasonable  inexpensive place to conduct marriages and receptions. It is the tradition of Rasool (SAW) that marriage be performed in the masjid. There is a severe need to have a place of our own where we can co-locate Nikah and reception events together.

While we address requirements of the children and the teenagers, there is a need to have a fully segregated physical activity facility for our brothers and sisters.

It is astonishing to see that in the population of over 50,000, there is not a one library where we can find authentic collection of books for review and learning. Granted that Internet now offers other opportunities to find the information in a different format, however, there is no substitute for a well referenced library and guided internet access.