I have been outside of the GTA but rarely. So I’ve seen what the rest of Canada is about in places like Sudbury, Alberta, and even interior BC. I’ve even lived for three years in the United States (Virginia and Pennsylvania) but I was very young. I’ve lived in Pakistan for some three years but was recently kicked out after overstaying my three-month long visa and came back to Toronto only last year. So though I’m not extremely well travelled, I have seen other areas outside my “comfort zone” if only briefly. Now the truth is that the GTA is the intellectual center of Canada. Here the most educated people reside. Educated, middle class, and urban. And also racially and culturally diverse, a city with a large population of people who are foreign born, coming from all corners of the world. Toronto is basically the New York City of Canada. If I was living in America I would like to live in NYC or my second choice would be Boston, Washington, Chicago, New Jersey or some other major urban center on the East Coast. Outside of GTA are people I do not at all identify with nor could I bear having to live among. They are simply too different socially and culturally to get along with to be happy among. Frankly, I find them to be too unsophisticated, too un-intellectual, and too “base”. Their lives revolve around drinking and partying. That just may be my limited experience, but when others confirm it I cannot help but generalize in this way.
Well it has nothing to do with race per se, but rather cosmopolitanism vs. homogenity. In other parts of the world that are non-White but still homogenous and rural, I would find it equally difficult to thrive in such an environment. In Canada, Toronto is very cosmopolitan and therefore very different than rural Ontario and most of the rest of the country which is pretty much racially homogenous. Rural Ontario in particular is predominantly “Waspish”, that is White Anglo Saxon Protestant. You made the mistake of implying that Lutherans are different than Protestants, which to anyone who has even an elementary education in comparative religion would find laughable. Martin Luther, the namesake of Lutherans, was the one who initiated the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Protestantism is a broad movement which includes Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Calvinist Reformists, and the Anabaptists, of whom the Mennonites are an offshoot of.
This is a very complex question which requires a lot of writing to fully explain. I find it difficult to summarize for someone who is otherwise very unfamiliar with Islam, a very rich and deep faith on an intellectual level. Nevertheless, you can tell your Indian friends that I’m a Muslim who is influenced by the Deobandi tradition particularly the Tawhid and Sunna stream that has come to be based in Panjpir (in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan). This is the same movement which heavily influenced certain segments of the Taliban. It is basically a puritanical movement that focuses on monotheism and is very much opposed to popular folk practices that reek of idolatry, such as tomb-veneration, amulets, and the heretical belief that the deceased can hear. In this respect it is quite similar to the so-called “Wahhabi” movement of Arabia.
Tunisia, like other North African countries, is dominated by a modernist and secularist elite that were educated by and imposed on that country by the French colonialists. Hence, the kind of Islam practiced in that part of the world is very diluted and lacking in genuine authenticity. You will find that at the present moment, the most genuine approach to Islam is that which is practiced in the Pak-Afghan border region, known as the Northwest Frontier, but also in Yemen and a few other regions. It is Islam as understood and practiced in these regions that is more pure since Muslims here were saved from the intoxicating influence of European colonialism.
You forgot about the jihad against whites and western culture. Fu^king Taliban? Really? And you're supid enough to admit it. Here's a thought....if us white westerners are so hard to take and live with then fu^k off back to northwest Pakistan where I'm sure you will find it very cosmopolitan and have wonderful internet access from your cave provided by your htreat Taliban leaders. You're a moron! I'm pretty sure the reason you don't come to Alberta is because you would be killed pretty quick with your twisted views.
American or Canadian is a false binary when it comes to culture. The real fault lines are Northeast coast, Midwest, West coast, the South, urban vs rural vs suburban, etc. Toronto is not ‘American’ but more precisely in the same cultural zone known as the Northeast or East coast which includes New York.
