Nearly six months after the tragic murder of six men in a Quebec City mosque, the capitol region will inaugurate its first Muslim cemetery on Sunday.
A portion of the Quebec Gardens cemetery, owned by the Lepine Cloutier/Athos funeral home in St-Augustin-de-Desmaures, will be dedicated to deceased Muslims.
The plot contains 500 lots, which will be reserved for the area’s Muslims.
Funeral home president Yvan Rodrigue said in April he had been planning this project for months before the attack.
The cemetery is being opened without the participation of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec, which is attempting to get its own project off the ground.
Centre secretary Mohamed Kesri recently told Le Soleil newspaper that the new cemetery doesn’t meet the needs of the Islamic community.
Kesri said many of Quebec City’s Muslims would prefer their loved ones be buried in a place owned by the community where they can be sure all the burial customs are followed.
This is not the same project as the one that has been in the works since last year in Saint-Apollinaire, 40 km outside of Quebec City.
The Centre culturel islamique de Quebec hopes to purchase land to establish its own cemetery for the Muslim community there.
A referendum will be held next weekend for those living near the site as the land would need to be rezoned.
With files from The Canadian Press
