Mosque to rise amid new Islamic cemetery
Board of Supervisors unanimously approved permits for the project, which has been in the works for a decade
SAN MARTIN » After almost two decades of worshipping in a backyard sheep barn, members of a Muslim congregation in southern Santa Clara County can finally proceed with its controversial plan to build a mosque and Islamic cemetery here.
The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved permits for the South Valley Islamic Center’s project Tuesday.
“Our nearest Muslim cemetery is nearly two hours away, and that is a great hardship for our families,” Karen Musa, president of the Islamic Center, which has been planning the project for more than a decade, told supervisors. “You cannot expect people to live here and not die here.”
The Islamic Center’s members have been praying and gathering in a “barn mosque” since 2001. That’s when the barn’s owner kicked out his sheep and let the group use the space rent-free.
In 2006, families in the congregation scraped together funds to buy a vacant 15.8- acre parcel at 14045 Monterey Road, where they hoped to bury loved ones and serve future generations of worshippers.
But the project, known as the Cordoba Center, has drawn opposition from the start, with complaints ranging from the proposed cemetery’s impact on local groundwater to the 30,000- squarefoot complex’s size, considered too large for the rural town. Anti-Islamic sentiments also have been hurled against the project.
Some of the congregation’s leaders say they have received harassing calls and even death threats, resulting in tense public meetings heavily staffed by sheriff’s deputies.
“The opposition for the last decade is not over the merit of this project— it has met all the requirements the county has asked,” said Noshaba Afzal, a community leader and Islamic Centermemberwho lives inunincorporated Gilroy. “This is clearly an ideological resistance, disguised under all these technical issues that keep coming up.”
But many opponents of the Cordoba Center say they’ve been unfairly lumped in with bigots.
“To constantly say those in the community are Islamaphobic leads me to believe there’s an agenda on that side,” said Kimberly Delgado, a member of the
San Martin Neighborhood Alliance, which has objected to the project’s size and the cemetery.
Many residents in the area rely on well water that has been contaminated over the years, including a toxic perchlorate spill in 2003 that tainted hundreds of wells.
Delgado and other residents have said they fear decomposing human remains from the cemetery could leach through the ground and contaminate theirwells.
“There are issues that don’t protect us enough …I want to be sure nothing is happening to our water,” Delgado said, noting three of her cats died after her well was contaminated.
Supervisors approved a series of permits for the project, which includes a 14,500-square-foot community center, 9,000- squarefoot mosque, a maintenance building, caretaker’s residence, community plaza and tent platforms for a summer camp.
Buildings occupy about 4% of the total site, according to county staffers.
The center would have daily prayer services throughout the day, which would draw 100 to 150 people, as well as events with up to 300 attendees on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The center is permitted to have four special events a year with as many as 500 people.
The cemetery would cover 3.5 acres and have a maximum of 1,996 gravesites, with a limit of 30 burials a year. Islamic burials do not use embalming fluids or other chemicals to preserve the body; instead, bodies are washed, wrapped in organic cotton and placed directly into the ground without a coffin.
The board also rejected appeals from two groups — the neighborhood alliance and the People’s Coalition for Government Accountability — which sued the county in 2012 over the board’s approval of a previous version of the project. The Islamic Center decided to withdraw that project rather than fight the lawsuit.
Supervisor Mike Wasserman, whose district includes South County, said he supports the project because it has met all of the county’s requirements and the Islamic Center will be required to conduct regular water quality tests and create an endowment to fund the cemetery’s maintenance.
The county determined, through an environmental study, that limiting the number of burialswould prevent water contamination issues.
“This has been a journey filled with differences of opinion, but at the end of the day, the project before us … shows both sides have made compromises, and the resulting density and intensity is appropriate and lawful for this particular site,” Wasserman said.
“South Valley Islamic Community is very pleased with the resolute and unanimous decision of the Santa Clara County Supervisors to uphold the constitution and preserve our lawful civil and religious liberties in reaffirming the approval of the Cordoba Center in San Martin,” Musa, the Islamic Center’s president, said in a written statement.