A burka-free city with a lesson for London

I asked some Muslim professionals why this metropolis had remained a burka-free zone. They looked baffled. "We aren't Saudi Arabia," said one. "Why should anyone want to be so backward, so separate?" asked a hotel owner who has contributed some $200,000 towards the cost of a new mosque. They were staggered to learn that the shroud was becoming a garment of choice across europe. Ayesha, a female medic from Syria, had a theory: "Maybe if you don't treat people like aliens, they don't behave like aliens." Since 9/11, these Muslims have felt vulnerable but not as estranged as so many of their brethren in the UK.

As Vancouverites they know they belong. Differences are not erased or feared but not exaggerated, either. Politicians and the media are not in a constant state of anxiety about ethnicities and Islam, and citizens buy into integration in exchange for the good life. Many Asians had modified their names - so Mohammed becomes "Moe" and Sunita is "Su" - to make themselves appear less foreign. They said such gestures made for greater ease with their countrymen.

People still freely worship as they wish, speak their languages, wear traditional clothes and have equal rights but citizens seem to avoid any sign of conspicuous separation. In schools children are given a strong sense of mutuality. The state believes in using the carrot, not the stick, to encourage cohesion by talking up the benefits of diversity, while influential Muslims shape positive attitudes. In a mosque I attended, the imam infused the congregation with patriotic pleasure; "Thank Allah for what you have been granted in this place, this paradise, where your children can flower." Later he told me that burkas would be "completely not Canadian - they would be opposed first of all by Muslims". If only we had such blessed imams in London.