Quebec town rejects Muslim cemetery

SAINT-APOLLINAIRE, QUE.

• Residents of a town near Quebec City have rejected a plan to establish the region’s first Muslim cemetery by a vote of 19 to 16.

Voters were deciding whether or not to allow a zoning change for the proposed site in Saint-Apollinaire, 35 kilometres southwest of Quebec City. Thirty-six of 49 registered voters cast ballots. One was rejected.

The plan for the cemetery was developed after January’s deadly mosque shooting in Quebec City, but the issue was sent to a referendum after enough people came forward to oppose the project. A Quebec law permits referendums on zoning matters and opponents of the project said Muslims should be buried in Islamic sections of existing cemeteries.

Quebec City Muslims said their community deserves the same rights as all other religious groups, which have their own burial grounds.

Quebec City’s Muslims have been looking for a cemetery for two decades, but increased their efforts after finishing paying off the city’s main mosque, in 2011, said Mohamed Kesri, who led the cemetery project.

Last January, when a gunman shot dead six men in the main prayer hall and injured 19 others, the bodies were sent overseas and to Montreal for burial.

“Since the events of Jan. 29, there was an extraordinary sense of community,” Kesri said in a recent interview.

“There are Catholic cemeteries, Protestant cemeteries, Jewish cemeteries — we aren’t inventing anything here,” said Kesri. “We want to be like everybody else.”

But a handful of people oppose the project and triggered the referendum.

“There were meetings after meetings. We were all incredibly surprised. We thought it would continue. And then this small minority risks destroying a project that belongs to thousands of Muslims.”

The land for the proposed cemetery is behind a nondenominational funeral parlour called Harmonia, located along Saint-Apollinaire’s industrial park.

Sylvain Roy, Harmonia’s director, said his company offered to sell part of the land to Quebec City’s mosque for $215,000.

The plan was to have two cemeteries — one non-sectarian and another Muslim — side by side, he said.

“We had about 10-12 people come see us after we made the announcement,” Roy said last week. “There is a small but ferocious opposition to this project.”

The project highlighted divisions within Quebec’s Muslim community, with some people preferring multiconfessional cemeteries as opposed to Muslim ones.

Just last month, Quebec adopted a law that allows municipalities to forgo referendums on land projects in order to give more power to local authorities.

Kesri said before the referendum that in the event of a loss, Quebec City’s Muslim community would pressure politicians to have the new legislation applied — if need be.