They Desperately Wanted To Build A Muslim Cemetery. Then Came The Backlash.

Muslim American communities still face resistance when trying to find places to bury their loved ones.

ORLAND PARK, Ill. — Kifah Mustapha, the imam at Orland Park Prayer Center, wasn’t surprised when a petition protesting the idea of a Muslim cemetery in the area began circulating.

Mustapha and leaders from other mosques in the suburbs of Chicago had anticipated resistance. They had seen the xenophobic and racist reactions that other mosques had gotten when trying to build cemeteries where Muslims could be buried according to Islamic tradition.

When the backlash came for his mosque, Mustapha was ready. He had quietly applied for all the permits and licenses needed to purchase and develop the land, had successfully fundraised the amount needed to develop the cemetery and had hired a top law firm that could step in if needed.

Critics in the community did what they could to stop the cemetery from being built, claiming it would bring unnecessary traffic to the area, decrease property values and affect the area’s drinking water.

Those reactions were not unlike the anti-mosque uproar of the early 2000s, when Muslim Americans faced vehement opposition to building new places of worship. Non-Muslim residents used zoning ordinances as a pretext to mask Islamophobic opposition to the growing Muslim population in their communities.