I buried my father a few days ago in a Muslim cemetery outside of Phoenix, Arizona. He passed away unexpectedly in his sleep in the last few days of Ramadan. My mother, sisters and I were devastated. My father was a gentle man who never raised his voice much less his hand against anyone, and lived his life according to one essential truth - Islam is about loving your neighbor.
And so when I read about the townsfolk of Sidney, New York trying to force their Muslim neighbors to dig up their local cemetery, I knew I had to say something.
A local Sufi group in Sidney received permission from the town to bury Muslim dead on their private property in 2005. This tiny cemetery has stood for years without incident. But with the recent onslaught of Islamophobia gripping the country, local politicians have decided to ride the wave of bigotry. Town supervisor Bob McCarthy has led a movement to get the Muslims to dig up their "unauthorized" cemetery. When asked what law prohibited the Muslims from having a burial site on their own land, his response was: "I don't know what the exact law is."
In fact, there is no law in New York prohibiting grave sites on private property. So the town leaders have gotten their attorneys to parse through law books to find something they could use to unearth the Muslim graves. The closest they have come is an obscure regulation that prohibits cemeteries on mortgaged land. The Muslim group is now trying to either subdivide their property to exclude the graves, or pay off their remaining mortgage (under $200,000) to prevent their loved ones from being torn from their final resting places.
Among those calling for the removal of the Muslim cemetery are "Tea Party" supporters who have suggested that the Muslim group is a "for profit" venture and should be denied First Amendment religious protection. Property rights don't seem to matter much to these alleged champions of liberty when Muslims are involved.
The hatred evident in this small-town drama is so clear and shocking that it truly gives me pause as to where the people of this great country are going. I have been saddened by the rising anti-Muslim mania in the past few months because this isn't the America I grew up in, nor the one the Founders fought and died for.
It is not the country my father immigrated to in 1976 - exactly two hundred years after the American Revolution. An America that he loved because it provided him economic opportunities and freedoms that he couldn't find in his native country of Pakistan. An America that didn't care what his religion or ethnicity was and gave him the chance to follow his dreams. An America that allowed his son to rise from poverty to become a successful Hollywood filmmaker and novelist.
As my fellow Americans turn more and more away from their principles and embrace the passions of a xenophobic mob, I question whether that country is gone forever. Whether "government of the people, by the people, for the people" has failed Lincoln's hopes and has indeed perished from the Earth.
This cemetery incident is just the latest in the "summer of hate" that reached its zenith with the shrill cries against the Park 51 Muslim community center in Manhattan. A center built by liberal Muslims to promote an Islam of peace and brotherhood became re-imagined in the delusional eyes of bigots as a "victory mosque" built by Muslim extremists in honor of Al-Qaeda.
What is fascinating and telling about both incidents is that those who have been targeted by the fear mongers are Sufi Muslims, mystics who celebrate God as the spirit of Love. The Sufis are the polar opposites of Al-Qaeda and its band of murderers, promoting a progressive Islam that embraces other religions warmly and seeks human reconciliation rather than conflict. Muslim fundamentalists have been attacking Sufis for centuries, as their brand of progressive Islam outshines the ugly corruption of religion that the fundamentalists want to promote. And now the Muslim fundamentalists' war against Sufism has been joined by fanatics of other religions and communities.
Anyone who has read the beautiful Sufi poetry of Rumi (ironically, the best selling poet in America today) will find an Islam of humility, of compassion, of love for women and reverence for the divine feminine, of not just tolerance, but joyful embrace of other religions. It is an Islam of music, of smiling faces, of laughter and companionship, not a dour Islam of anger and cruelty. This is the true heart of Islam that allowed the religion to succeed and become a global civilization, despite the best efforts of fundamentalists to poison the faith with violence and stupidity.
This Islam of love, not the Islam of hate, is what is being rejected by people like the town leaders of Sidney and the opponents of Park 51. It is this very Islam that is the greatest threat, because it is like clear water. It reflects back the truth of those who look upon it. And the bigots only see their own ugliness mirrored back to them. In demanding that Muslims dig up their graves, the leaders of Sidney have only unearthed the graves of their own hearts and revealed all the rot and decay within their own souls.
For Muslims, respect for the graves of every community is central to our faith. Prophet Muhammad once was seated with his followers when he saw a Jewish funeral procession pass by. The Prophet immediately stood up out of respect. His followers were startled - the dead man was a Jew, and there were political tensions between the Muslim and Jewish communities of Arabia at the time. But the Prophet simply turned to them and said: "Was he not a human being?" Indeed, today the ancient Jewish cemetery of Medina remains intact and preserved, despite the harsh fundamentalism of the current Saudi government and its discriminatory practices toward non-Muslims.
But respect for graves is not just a Muslim value. It is a universal human belief that how we treat the dead reveals the character of our community. When an ancient Muslim graveyard was demolished in Jerusalem to build the ironically named "Museum of Tolerance," Jews and Christians joined with their Muslim neighbors to protest this lack of respect for the dead.
As I have learned in recent days, death is an unveiling. Truths are revealed at the end that were hidden at the beginning. And how we choose to close the door on the past defines what awaits us in the future.
When my father passed away, I was asked to perform a central Muslim burial ritual. I bathed his body with my hands before we lowered him into the earth. It was one of the most intimate and powerful experiences of my life. As I cleaned his corpse with loving attention, I remembered all the times that he would bathe me with such love when I was a child. It was a final act of love, of farewell, that I will carry with me to my own grave.
America now has a choice as to which path will define its character. If we retain our sense of honor and common decency, we will continue to be the men and women that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would have embraced.
But if we choose hatred for both the living and the dead, then I can only say this. In digging up the graves of our neighbors, we dig one for our own civilization.
Kamran Pasha is a Hollywood filmmaker and the author of Shadow of the Swords, a novel on Crusades (Simon & Schuster; June 2010). For more information please visit: http://www.kamranpasha.com
Follow Kamran Pasha on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kamranpasha
May God SWT have mercy on him and wipe away his sins and may He write for him a place in Jannah, insha'Allah. He died in the blessed days of Ramadan, and insha'Allah, his grave is filled with peace and happiness. I pray for him, and for all Muslims, both dead and alive, for mercy and forgiveness and peace.
I would also like to thank the posters here for their compassion and love - this is the America that the world doesn't see as often as we'd like in recent times. Peace to all.
I must say that I find the reasoning you have raised to be disingenuous -- that the owners may move one day. Throughout America, there are graves on private land and family farms. Once we establish the precedent of towns forcing people to unearth their loved ones on the basis of the fears that you are raising, then we might as well tear apart every homestead in America where a loved one is buried.
If the Sufi group sells the land, the new owners will be aware of the graves and will deal with them appropriately as part of the transaction. And in my experience, people do not abandon the graves of their loved ones easily. My father's grave is very much a part of my family now. I expect to be going to Phoenix regularly to pay my respects, even though I do not live there or own property there. That graveyard in Phoenix is now as much a part of my life as my home in LA.
Your usage of the term disengenuous implies that you have some inherent knowledge of my intent, which I am not sure that you do. I wouldn't mention it except that it is the very basis of my objection to your article in the first place. You have accused the Sidney Town Board of being religously intolerent or motivated by prejudice without the least shred of evidence to so suggest. When I tried to explain their very real position, you accuse me (or at least my explanation) of being disengenuine. These kinds of rhetoric-based accusations do nothing to ease tensions between groups of people who seek understanding of each other's ideals.
I recognize your grief at burying your father. Both of my parents are buried in the Prospect Hill Cemetery in Sidney and my affection for them is also very real. I chose to have them buried in an officially sanctioned cemetery partly because I did not want their remains to have to be disturbed should I sell the property they owned in Sidney.
Your confidence in whatever future owner purchases the property in question notwithstanding, the issue is the fact that the State of New York may very well require that the Town of Sidney maintain these graves at taxpayer expense. Yes, there are many old gravesites scattered around the countryside. Most of these sites are either lost to memory or currently being maintained at taxpayer expense. That is the very crux of the issue at hand.
For the record, I grew up in Sidney, went to school there from kindergarten through the twelfth grade, lived there another twenty years and to this day return several times a year. I know the people and demographics as well as anyone could. The idea that Sidney is some sort of hot-bed of religous intolerence or ultra conservatism is downright laughable.
It happens that this particular group of people is Muslim. Being Muslim does not equate to having rights that no other religous or sectarian group of people possess. If they were Jewish.... they would have the same situation. Likewise were they fundamentalist Christians or Noahides or Lutherans or Baptists. Likewise if they were members of the local carpenters union or Freemasons or the Moose Lodge.
How sad!
First of all, i want to thank you for your beautiful expression of support, and also give you condolances on the recent loss of your father. Thank you so much for writing this and thereby creating a forum where others feel compelled to respond to your personal story and to the story of the assault on our dergah. i would also like to thank the many generous people of Sidney and outside Sidney who have expressed solidarity, support and respect for the dergah, accepted our Muslim community into their community with open arms, and expressed outrage at what McCarthy is trying to do. i truly believe that his actions do not speak for the majority of people in the town and it is a shame that Sidney is being conceived of as a bigoted town when in fact it is just a very bigoted and ignorant man with a few bigoted followers behind him. As always, truth stands clear from falsehood and it is quite clear who stands on the side of truth in this situation. Your support is very appreciated.
Thank you for your kind words of condolence. May God continue to bless and protect the dergah and the good people of Sidney from this small band of bigots. The struggle for the future of your community in New York is actually the struggle for the future of America.
Peace,
Kamran
I'm sorry for your loss and I'm so disturbed by this horrific bigotry against your faith.
Is there a place where people can donate to help bring down the mortgage of the Sidney group? Things are tight for us but I'm sure I could come up with a few dollars for this cause.
Osmanli Naksibendi Dergahi
1663 Wheat Hill Rd.
Sidney Center, NY 13839
Donations to the center are tax exempt and the federal Tax ID number is: 20-3480041
I would challenge the author or anyone else to name any country anywhere on the face of the earth where Muslims have greater freedom to pursue their religion in whatever manner they choose, than right here in the US.
I don't think you understood the core issue. You can go on and on with what a free county the US is and how America is a melting pot. This is not the case anymore. The Jews in Jerusalem destroyed one of the most historical muslim cemeteries, they destroyed about 1800 mosques since 1948 the year when the west gave Palestine to the Polish and German Jews for the sins Hitler commited against them, my nation paid the price for that, inspite of all war crimes and genocide against Muslims and Arabs we did not destroy a single Jewish temple or a Christian church in the entire middle east or digging up their graves under any justification. I lived in Jordan and Egypt for years after the Jews took our homes and kiked us out of the country, till now there is three larg christian cemeteries and one Jewish in our small city in Jordan. I have never heard any talk about digging their graves or destroying thier churches simply because our great faith Islam forbids us from doing it. Read the the history of the crossades and be the judge. I'm taking my American wife and my five American kids back to my samll town in Jordan. Two million Muslims are killed on the hands of America and the Christian west and still Americans feel safe to walk and shop in Amman and Cairo, how come?.