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Anchorage Daily News – February 20, 2007
First Muslim cemetery opens in Alaska
Julia O'Malley
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A 1998 newspaper story about two Muslim children mistakenly buried on top of each other in Palmer left Ake Dobrova weak with outrage.
One of the children had to be exhumed and reburied, a violation of Muslim beliefs. The cemetery mix-up caused anguish all around.
"I was feeling so bad about it," said Dobrova, a small-business owner from Albania. "What kind of people are we (that) we don't have no cemetery?"
That year, he decided to make a cemetery himself. This year, what he started has become the first official Muslim resting place in Alaska.
Islamic teaching, or "sunnah," is strict and specific about the treatment of the dead. A body must be washed by the family, prayed over by the men, wrapped in a shroud and laid in the ground facing Mecca. Burial must occur quickly after death, and the grave must be located near those of other Muslims.
Some have paid thousands of dollars to have the bodies of loved ones sent back to their home countries because there was no Muslim cemetery in Alaska. Often there was trouble with paperwork and shipping. For many years, Muslims collected money to build a place to lay their family members to rest.
Anchorage now has close to 2,000 Muslims, said Imran Khan, ICCAA's (the Islamic Community Center of Anchorage, Alaska) acting imam, or spiritual leader. A few are converts, and many more are immigrants from the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Their numbers have increased along with Anchorage's minority population, which has grown sixfold since 1970 while the population at large has only doubled….
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/ap_alaska/story/8656236p-8548061c.html
St. Petersburg Times – February 13, 2007
FL: Green burials voted down
Dan Dewitt
BROOKSVILLE - In a cemetery planned for a 5-acre tract near Istachatta, the markers would have been wooden slabs or crosses.The bodies would have been buried without embalming; the caskets were to be wooden boxes meant to decompose quickly.
That is Bosnian tradition, said Vedad Sakovic, president of the Bosnian Member Association. It also almost exactly matches the practices of the fast-growing green burial movement.
"It's totally natural," said Sue Hughes, a Brooksville Realtor who represented the Bosnian group before the Hernando County Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday. "This is a really big thing right now."
But residents of Deerhaven Estates, near the planned cemetery site, were not convinced.
Neither were members of the Planning and Zoning Commission, who voted unanimously against the cemetery, though the county Planning Department had recommended approval.
The residents had a long list of concerns.
Though the land - east of U.S. 41 and north of Lake Lindsey Road - is zoned as agricultural, it is divided into large residential lots.
If it were developed as a traditional cemetery, it would change the look of the rustic neighborhood; if it were too natural, it might not be properly maintained.
One neighbor said that because the cemetery was for Muslims, he would not be allowed to be buried in a cemetery just down the street from his house….
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/13/Hernando/Green_burials_voted_d.shtml
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