Citizens of a Lesser God: Religious Minorities and the Legal Discourse of Multi-Cultural Democracies: the Case of Canada

Global migration flows are changing the socio-cultural fabric of European cities. New issues in the management of public and particularly urban space arise. Countries where cultural diversity is a relatively new phenomenon should learn from countries where it is a long-debated issue. Know-how and good policies should be exported and adapted. Canada is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world. In the last thirty years, the legal and planning system of Canada has sought to adapt to the needs of new ethno-religious communities. Islamic communities in the Great Toronto Area and in other Canadian metropolises have recurrently faced problems in their attempts of ‘making Muslim space’. Major contentious areas are parking and traffic standards, planning compatibility, aesthetic impact, and fiscal regulations. The semiotic analysis of legal controversies about the establishment of new minority (and particularly Islamic) places of worship in Canada reveals socio-cultural tensions concerning the sense of belonging of both majority and minorities. The Canadian legal and planning system is not perfect but is still a model of rationality in comparison with the way in which the issue of minority places of worship is hijacked by media and politics in most ‘Western’ countries.