TRENTON, Ontario
Imams in the province of Ontario will use Friday jumah prayers services to send a message to Muslims – vote in the country’s next federal election.
Spearheaded by the new non-partisan Canadian Muslim Vote organization, the call to vote will emanate from the 21 mosques around Toronto, Canada’s largest city.
Low voter turnout among Muslims means politicians pay little attention to their needs and desires, the organization says on its website.
“Politicians offer little for Canadian Muslims because their low turnout means low potential benefit on election day: and as the public conversation increasingly excludes or marginalizes Canadian Muslims, their turnout declines further,” according to the website that was initiated by a group of young professionals in the Toronto area.
In other words, there are few votes to be gained from Muslims, so politicians do not pay much attention. The next federal election, which traditionally is held every four years in Canada, must be held on or before Oct. 19.
According to a 2007 Elections Canada report, there are about 1 million Muslims in Canada but they have a very low voter turnout. An exit poll from the 2011 election showed, of those Muslims who did vote, 12 percent cast ballots for the ruling Conservative party, 46 percent for the Liberals and 38 percent for the New Democrat Party, as reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
According to Statistics Canada, by 2030, one in 10 Canadians will be identified as Muslim, making them one of the largest voting blocks in the country.
In areas in and around Toronto with high Muslim populations, voter turnout can make a big difference.
“I lost an election by 300 votes,” former Liberal MP Omar Alghabra, a Muslim, told the CBC. “I know from experience that every vote counts.”
Some speculate that the apparent rise in Islamophobia, as demonstrated by the new anti-terrorism Bill C-51 and the controversy about wearing the niqab during Canadian citizenship ceremonies, has left many Canadian Muslims feeling left out of the political process.
Mohammed Ayub Khan, a political science researcher at McMaster University, told the CBC that those issues have captured the attention of Muslims and may result in more voters.
“2015 may well serve as the watershed event in Canadian Muslim political history,” he said.
