'We're here to stay': Quebecers who fought to get Muslim cemeteries built say they're a sign of progress

Standing in front of the gates of the Quebec City Muslim Cemetery, Boufeldja Benabdallah reflects on the more than two decades he spent trying to establish a local burial ground for his community.

"It was 22 years of fighting, research and meetings," he said. "People were burying their loved ones at the Muslim cemetery in Montreal." 

Benabdallah, who is the cemetery director and co-founder of the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre, said it was extremely difficult to find land that was available, affordable and properly zoned.

Reda Bouchelaghem of the Association Culturelle Islamique de l'Estrie (ACIE) in Quebec's Eastern Townships said his group faced similar challenges.

Both men say it took a tragedy that shocked the country for their cemeteries to see the light of day. 

It has been five years since the deadly attack on the Quebec City mosque. On Jan. 29, 2017, six members of Benabdallah's congregation were killed, and five others were critically injured when a gunman entered the city's Islamic Cultural Centre during evening prayers. One of the injured is still in a wheelchair. Alexandre Bissonnette is serving two concurrent life sentences for the killings.

Following the shootings, the bodies of five of the six Muslim men killed were sent to their countries of origin. The sixth was buried in Laval, Que., which at the time had the only two Muslim cemeteries in Quebec.  

According to Islamic tradition, the body of a deceased Muslim is to be washed, shrouded and a communal prayer performed before it is interred in the shortest possible time after death — something that's been historically difficult for Muslims in Canada. 

A few months after the attack, Benabdallah found a potential cemetery site in Saint-Apollinaire, a town of 6,000 about 45 kilometres south of Quebec City. The mayor of Saint-Apollinaire approved an Islamic cemetery, but a group of residents protested the project. They pushed the issue to a municipal referendum, where it was voted down.

Benabdallah instead got the ear of Quebec City's then-mayor Régis Labeaume, who said he was determined to work with the city's Muslim community in an effort to heal and move forward after the 2017 attack.

In the days after the shooting rampage at the mosque, Labeaume promised to find a suitable site for a Muslim cemetery.

"We are working with them to see what they need. We will help them," he said at the time.

It was Labeaume who later found a parcel of land on Frank-Carrel Street in the same Sainte-Foy neighbourhood as the Quebec City mosque.

"He knew the difficulties we were having, and all of a sudden, he found a site that belonged to the city and was already zoned for a cemetery," said Benabdallah.