A banquet hall in an industrial part of this Vancouver suburb seems an unlikely venue for a struggle of faith.
The Islamic Society of North America's Canadian arm staged its annual western conference on the theme that could hardly have been timelier: Islam and the West.
How can Muslims remain true to their values while navigating a freewheeling, lately suspicious, western society?
The answer they got at the weekend meeting: stay united and remain faithful to Islam's core values, but be prepared to adapt to - and even embrace - Canadian pluralism.
It's a transition many immigrants have made, but it's an particularly hard proposition for a faith that, more than most others, is a way of life for its followers.
The issue is especially difficult for young Muslims, said Imam Zijad Delic, head of the B.C. Muslim Association.
"We know our kids in North America are living on the crossroads," he told the conference. "Many of them ask themselves, 'Who am I, Muslim, Canadian?' "
Islam is Canada's fastest-growing religion with more than 600,000 adherents, but it's also been on the defensive since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.
And last month, anti-Semitic comments by two Canadian Muslim leaders exposed the little understood internal struggle between the community's moderate and more radical elements.
Dr. Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Council argued Israeli civilians were legitimate targets for suicide bombers because they are all required to serve in the military.
That same week came revelations that Sheik Younus Kathrada, who runs an East Vancouver Islamic centre, told separate audiences Jews were brothers of monkeys and swine and that jihad - holy war - was justifiable against those who didn't accept Islam.
Elmasry apologized for his remarks but kept his post as council president. Kathrada claimed he'd been misinterpreted, but insisted his views were grounded in Islamic scriptures.
Neither man got a public mention at the conference, but the message from speakers was plain enough: anything that serves to isolate Muslims from other Canadians should be shunned.
Louay Safi, an American Islamic expert, said it's important that Muslims remain united.
"Unity is a source of strength, a source of power," he said.
But unity shouldn't be confused with uniformity of thought, nor should it be based on ethnic or racial lines, said Safi.
And that unity should reach outside the Muslim community to other faiths.
"This is a call for what, for common ground," he said. "We should work with others who share with us our purposes, our interest to build with us a good society."
Muslims in the West must understand they have a covenantal relationship with the rest of society that transends solidarity with other Muslims who commit wrongdoing, Safi said.
"That's why Muslims must be clear on this point and to speak with authority to the surrounding community," he said.
Some attendees acknowledged concern about the influence of men like Kathrada, especially on impressionable young people.
Two young men who regularly attended Kathrada's lectures, including the one on jihad, disappeared last August. One of them, Vancouver resident Rudwan Khalil, was reported killed last month in Chechnya with three Muslim rebels. His friend, Kamal Elbahja of Maple Ridge, B.C., is still missing.
The difficulty, one conference attendee said privately, is that the young find the certainty of someone like Kathrada attractive. Youthful fervour is also ignited when they see Muslims in other countries being persecuted, he said.
Delic urged Muslim parents to keep the lines of communication open with their children.
Islam is a religion that doesn't have a formal clerical hierarchy, relying on scholars and learned imams to help interpret the Qur'an and the Sunnah. It's hard sometimes to keep radicals from turning up at the mosque to preach, based on their interpretations of scripture.
Hatim Zaghloul, a leader in Calgary's 85,000-member Muslim community, said leaders there now have a policy of excluding speakers whose preaching turns to vitriol.
Toronto imam Hamid Slimi also said a public perception of the nastier punishments meted out under Islamic sharia law - amputation for theft, stoning for adultery - has masked the fact Islam is a religion of life.
"When you imagine Islam, people think of death," he told the conference.
The tension between Islam's moderate and fundamental poles has raised a call by some for a Christian-style reformation.
But Islamic scholar Jamal Badawi of St. Mary's University in Halifax said it's a misguided approach.
Islam doesn't reject modernity, Badawi said, and it can adapt to western society. Reform suggests the religion itself is off-course when what's needed is for individuals to rejuvenate their faith by reviewing its core principles in the Qur'an and Sunnah.
"There is no evil in Islam," he said. "There is evil in Muslims."
Muslims know anti-Semitic and anti-western rants have given Islam a black eye in the West, Badawi said in an interview. But there is no basis for intolerance in Mohamed's teachings, he said.
"If you go forward to the Qur'an and Sunnah itself, you'll find the Prophet never used such harsh kind of criticism," he said.
Islam's intelligentsia has to confront the radicals, Badawi suggests.
"The problem needs to be addressed honestly, but needs to be addressed also by Muslim scholars to give them evidence, not because it's politically right or legally right but because it's Islamically right not to engage in this kind of polemics."