Islamic Education in Quebec: Weekend Schools, French Language, and the Challenge of Islamophobia

Introduction

Islamic education in Quebec faces a unique set of challenges that exist nowhere else in Canada. The province’s linguistic distinctiveness — French as the language of public life, instruction, and integration — intersects with a political culture of secularism that is more assertive than anywhere else in the country. Law 21, passed in 2019, prohibits religious symbols for public sector employees in positions of authority, including teachers — a law that has directly affected Muslim women in Quebec classrooms and intensified the community’s feeling of precarity.

Against this backdrop, Quebec’s Muslim community — concentrated overwhelmingly in Montreal — has built a network of weekend schools, part-time maktabs, and a small number of full-time Islamic schools. This guide maps that landscape and explains what Islamic education in Quebec really looks like in 2026.

Quebec’s Muslim Community: Scale and Diversity

Quebec is home to approximately 330,000–350,000 Muslims, representing the second-largest Muslim population in Canada after Ontario. Nearly all are concentrated in the Montreal metropolitan area.

Montreal’s Muslim community is one of the most ethnically diverse in the world:

This North African majority fundamentally shapes Quebec Islamic education. Unlike Ontario — where South Asian (Pakistani/Indian) Hanafi tradition dominates the maktab landscape — Montreal’s Islamic education is heavily influenced by the Maliki and Shafi’i traditions brought by North African immigrants, with a strong Arabic and Francophone orientation.

The linguistic reality adds another layer: many Montreal Muslims are Francophone, educated in French, and living their professional lives in French. Islamic education that speaks only in English or only in Arabic misses the linguistic reality of a large portion of the community.

The Islamic Education Landscape in Quebec

Islamic education in Quebec operates primarily through three models:

Unlike Ontario, where the after-school weekday maktab is the dominant model, Quebec’s weekend school is more common — reflecting both the community’s Francophone professional integration (children have more homework in French schools) and the challenging logistics of getting children to a mosque on weekday evenings in a city where driving is essential and traffic is unpredictable.

MAC’s Network in Montreal

The Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) has the largest organised Islamic education presence in Quebec, operating multiple centres and part-time schools across the Montreal region:

MAC’s Quebec network is primarily part-time — weekend schools and after-school programmes — rather than full-time schools, reflecting the more challenging environment for private religious schools in the province.

MAC’s Montreal part-time schools are among the most organised in the province, with curriculum frameworks, teacher training, and administrative systems that exceed what independent mosque maktabs typically offer. For families in MAC-served neighbourhoods, these programmes represent the highest-quality available option in the part-time sector.

Weekend Islamic Schools in Montreal

Weekend Islamic schools are the most common form of organised Islamic education in Montreal. They run on Saturdays or Sundays, typically for 3–4 hours, covering Quran recitation, Islamic studies, and Arabic language.

The standard Montreal weekend school session covers:

• Quran recitation (Qaidah for beginners, Nazra for advanced students)
• Islamic Studies (Aqeedah, Fiqh, Seerah — in English, French, or Arabic depending on the school)
• Surah and dua memorisation
• Arabic language instruction (varying depth by school)

The bilingual character of Montreal’s Muslim community creates curriculum complexity. Some schools teach Islamic Studies in French (serving Francophone Muslim children), others in English (serving Anglophone families), and others in Arabic (serving Arab-background families with strong Arabic at home). The most sophisticated schools attempt to serve all three groups.

Contact hours — 3–4 hours per week in a weekend school — are significantly lower than the 8 hours per week of a weekday maktab. Progress is correspondingly slower: a child starting Quran literacy at age 6 in a weekend school may take 10–12 years to complete the programme that a weekday maktab student completes in 7.

The French Language Challenge

The French language requirement in Quebec creates a distinctive challenge for Islamic education not found in any other province.

For full-time Islamic schools: Under Quebec’s language laws, full-time private schools that receive any provincial funding must teach in French. Schools that operate entirely in English risk losing access to per-pupil subsidies. This means that a full-time Islamic school in Quebec must be able to deliver the full Quebec curriculum in French — requiring teachers who are not only qualified to teach the Ontario or national curriculum but specifically the Quebec French-medium curriculum (Programme de formation de l’école québécoise).

For maktabs and weekend schools: These are not subject to Quebec’s language laws directly — they are religious programmes, not schools. However, the practical reality is that children educated in French public schools often have more Quran and Islamic Studies contact in French or Arabic than in English. Maktab materials (most of which are published in English or Urdu in the North American context) may not resonate as naturally for Francophone Muslim children.

For adult Islamic education: Much of the available Islamic content — books, YouTube channels, online courses — is in English or Arabic. French-language Islamic educational content is significantly less available, creating a real gap for Francophone Muslim adults who want to deepen their knowledge in their mother tongue.

Several Montreal organisations are working to produce French-language Islamic educational content. This is a genuine growth area — and a market that ilmify and similar platforms will need to serve with French-language interfaces to maximise their utility for Quebec institutions.

Law 21 and Secularism: The Elephant in the Room

Quebec’s Law 21 — the Act Respecting the Laicity of the State — came into force in June 2019. It prohibits public sector employees in positions of authority (including teachers, police officers, and lawyers) from wearing religious symbols while on duty. In practice, this law disproportionately affects Muslim women who wear the hijab.

The direct impact on Islamic education has been significant:

• Several qualified Muslim teachers who wear hijab have been denied teaching positions in Quebec public schools
• Muslim families — already concerned about the secular character of public schools — have felt their children’s safety and belonging in the public system further compromised
• Demand for Islamic school alternatives has increased, as families feel more urgency about providing Islamic education outside the public school environment

Law 21 has been challenged legally (the Superior Court upheld it in 2021; appeals continue) and has become a defining issue for Quebec’s Muslim community. It has also become a factor in Islamic school enrolment decisions — some families cite Law 21 as a reason for pursuing home-based Islamic education or full-time Islamic schooling rather than relying on public schools to provide any degree of Islamic-friendly environment.

Full-Time Islamic Schools in Quebec: A Difficult Environment

Establishing and sustaining a full-time Islamic school in Quebec is considerably harder than in Ontario or Alberta. The reasons include:

• Language requirement: Schools must teach in French to access provincial subsidies; finding French-medium Islamic studies teachers is difficult
• Regulatory complexity: Quebec’s school registration and curriculum approval process is more demanding than Ontario’s
• Political climate: Law 21 and Quebec’s assertive secularism create a less welcoming political environment for visible religious institutions
• Smaller community: Montreal’s Muslim community, while significant, is smaller than the GTA’s — limiting the fee-paying enrolment base that sustains a full-time school

Despite these challenges, Montreal does have full-time Islamic schools. Several operate as independent private schools under Quebec’s MEES (Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur) regulations. Their tuition fees are typically in the

        7,000–7,000–7,000–
      

12,000/year range, and waiting lists exist at the better-regarded schools — suggesting demand that outpaces supply here as well.

Adult Islamic Education and Community Circles

Montreal has a rich adult Islamic education culture, particularly in the Arabic-speaking and North African communities. Mosques run regular halaqas (study circles), and organisations like MAC’s Canadian Institute of Islamic Civilization provide community lectures and learning events.

French-language Islamic education for adults is an emerging area. Several organisations are developing online and in-person content for Francophone Muslims who want access to Islamic knowledge in their mother tongue. This is an underserved gap — and an area of growth.

Challenges Specific to Quebec

Language: The French-English-Arabic triangulation that characterises Montreal’s Muslim community creates curriculum, staffing, and communication challenges found nowhere else in Canada.

Secularism and Law 21: The political and social climate creates pressure on Muslim families and Islamic institutions that affects everything from teacher recruitment to building permits for new mosques.

Smaller institutional base: Montreal’s Islamic education sector is less developed than Ontario’s — fewer full-time schools, smaller MAC network, less philanthropic capital invested in Islamic education infrastructure.

Geographic concentration: Most Montreal Muslims live in a handful of neighbourhoods (Côte-des-Neiges, Parc-Extension, Rosemont, Ville Saint-Laurent) — which creates dense local demand but leaves Muslim families in other parts of the island underserved.

Conclusion

Islamic education in Quebec is shaped by forces that simply don’t exist in the same combination anywhere else in Canada: the French language, Quebec’s assertive secularism, the North African majority community’s distinct traditions, and a political environment that has made Muslim religious visibility a contested issue. Yet Montreal’s Muslim community has built a meaningful network of Islamic education institutions despite all of this — a testament to the community’s resilience and its commitment to raising the next generation with Islamic knowledge and identity.

For those institutions — maktabs, weekend schools, community centres — the right administrative tools make the difference between running effectively and drowning in paperwork.

Ready to simplify your maktab’s administration? Start free at ilmify.app — designed for Islamic educational institutions across Canada, including Quebec.