Cross-Cultural Landscapes: Integrating Islam into the Rural Canadian Vernacular

Abstract

Canada is a country of immigrants. Over generations our iconic landscape has offered a focal point for integration and been an important symbol of our identity. Yet as new cultures integrate their identity often fluctuates between old culture and new homeland. For Islamic immigrants, at a time when the world is rampant with Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment, assimilation has largely meant the transplanting of home culture and community in an almost exclusively urban setting. Muslims, like other immigrant groups, are part of a multicultural narrative which lacks a connection to Canada’s identity and its symbolic landscape–our wilderness. This thesis illustrates the representation of an Islamic-Canadian identity tied to our country’s landscape through the design of a mosque and cross-cultural community centre to answer the question of what it means to be both Muslim and Canadian.