In this article, I suggest that there was a tacit demand for recognition underlying the Islamic Institute for Civil Justice set up in 2003 by Syed Mumtaz Ali, an imam in Toronto. I describe the normative conditions that religious arbitration in family matters failed to fulfil, despite the Boyd Report’s recommendations (2004). Certain issues, such as the risk of communal sectarianism, the lack of gender equality and the questionable protection of individual autonomy, came to the fore. Overall, this case offers us a cartography of recognition, highlighting the main limits to satisfying such demands within a liberal model of multiculturalism.