We’re visiting Niagara Falls (highly recommended, by the way) and there are far, far more Muslims here than I have ever seen at any other tourist spot I’ve been to. There are also a ton of Middle Eastern and South Asian restaurants and that’s who seems to own a lot of other businesses here too.

I don’t have a problem with it (especially not the restaurants), Muslims can go where they want to go, I’m just not sure what the draw is here specifically. Is there some sort of religious significance to waterfalls in Islam? They aren’t praying at the falls, so I don’t know if that’s it.

Anyway, it’s been a great couple of days here so far. I’ve only been on the Canadian side and I hear the American side is trashy, but the falls are so beautiful and the whitewater walk along the rapids was incredible and, of course, everyone is so nice here.

Edit: I just looked, there are two mosques, an Islamic society and an Islamic cultural center in the city. The population is around 88,000 people. Maybe Canada has more Muslims than the U.S. and that’s it?

  • ebits21English
    8·
    1 year ago

    I mean many people come from Toronto/GTA and Toronto is very diverse. May be simple as that.

    Are you local?

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
      74·
      1 year ago

      I am not. I’m not even Canadian. Sadly, I live in the inferior country to the south. But I grew up in a town with a significant Muslim population, so it’s not culture shock or anything. There’s just a ton of Muslims here for some reason.

      • Pratai
        612·
        1 year ago

        So, you- an American tourist in Canada are asking why there are so many Muslims in Canada? Did you ever wonder why there are so many Americans in Canada as well?

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
          8·
          1 year ago

          I am asking why there are so many Muslims in a specific place in Canada. As I said in my edit, there are two mosques here, an Islamic cultural center and an Islamic society. The population is 88,000 people. You don’t think that is an unusual number for North America?

          Now, I do see that Muslims are 5% of the Canadian population vs. 1% of the American population, so that could be it.

          • bionicjoey
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yeah Canada has been welcoming a lot of Muslims in for various reasons for a long time. Lots of refugees from the Syrian civil war ended up in Canada. My parents became good friends with a family who came over from a refugee camp in Jordan almost a decade ago.

            Edit: also, not that we’re perfect or anything, but Canadians are on average a lot less phobic of the Middle East compared to the US.