Prayer centre appeal raises more questions
So the Waterloo West Community Association is appealing a zone change that would allow a house at 510 Erbsville Road to be used as a prayer centre by local Muslims.
On one hand, this development is entirely predictable. The neighbours who opposed the prayer centre had vowed that they would take the issue to the Ontario Municipal Board when Waterloo’s city council unanimously decided to allow the application.
Now they’ve done what they promised. A group opposing the prayer centre says it has raised $35,000 for legal fees. The hearing is scheduled for Jan. 25 at 10 a.m. at Waterloo City Centre on Regina Street.
On the other hand, this news opens up a Pandora’s box of new questions.
“I was surprised they were able to raise $35,000,” said Waterloo’s Mayor Dave Jaworsky. “That’s a lot of money for a neighbourhood to raise.”
He and other observers are wondering how much of that money even comes from Waterloo.
“Every now and then there’s mosques going up in Ontario and sometimes they get a rough ride,” Jaworsky said.
Perhaps some of those people in other communities are sending money to the group in Waterloo in hopes of stopping the building being used as a prayer centre.
“I think there is a fair amount of intolerance in communities throughout Canada and that’s what we need to fix,” Jaworsky said.
Which leads to an even bigger question: Is this about anti-Muslim bigotry? Or is it about something else?
It’s easy to say that anyone who opposes the establishment of a Muslim place of worship must therefore be bigoted. But that isn’t necessarily so.
The request by the Muslim Association of Canada, which owns the Erbsville Road property, is very small. There is no proposal to build a multistorey mosque or, God forbid, a traffic light.
The change simply adjusts the zoning so that people in the neighbourhood could come to the building and pray together at
certain times of the day.
It’s the act of prayer itself, and not the particular religion, that some neighbours have said upsets them.
Many of those who object to the proposed prayer centre are people of East Asian descent who live in the nearby Laurelwood subdivision.
Some have said a prayer centre, even a well-planned one, is against the principles of “feng shui,” an ancient Chinese belief system that studies the placement of objects, buildings and communities so as to maximize the flow of positive energy.
In that belief system, a home that’s too close to a cemetery or any place of worship will attract bad luck because of the disembodied spirits believed to be lingering nearby.
Feng shui is not a recognized planning principle, and the city paid no attention to these arguments. Neither, in all likelihood, will the Ontario Municipal Board.
Bouquet for Premier Wynne: I’m often critical of the Ontario Liberal government, so it’s important to recognize when they get it right. They did last week when they committed $1 million for food and medical aid to the persecuted Rohingya people of Myanmar.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, who are Muslim, have been driven out of their villages and into neighbouring Bangladesh. Their villages have been burned down and some are starving as they hide in the forests. Premier Kathleen Wynne visited Kitchener last week, which has the largest community of Rohingya refugees in Canada. “Hearing their heartbreaking experiences first-hand reinforced my belief that the international community must act urgently to end this brutality,” she said as she announced the aid. That’s the right thing to do.