Canada : Muslims will finally have their cemetery in Quebec

Muslims in the Quebec city will finally have their own cemetery, the municipality announced on Friday after months of procrastination, La Croix reports. This cemetery was promised after the massive shooting at a mosque in Quebec late January, when six worshipers were killed by a student. The Muslim cemetery is supposed to take part of a land adjoining the present cemetery of the city.

According to the same source, the city of Quebec «accepted (...) an offer of purchase filed by the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec for a municipal land that will allow it to construct a cemetery», said the municipality in a communique.

The opening of a Muslim cemetery has been discussed for nearly a decade, but the debate became very tense after the mosque attack earlier this year. The Muslim community had lamented that the bodies of the victims had to be transported to Montreal, 250 kilometers away, states La Croix.

On July the 16th, residents of Saint-Apollinaire, a suburb of Quebec city rejected a project that aimed at building a cemetery by the Quebec Islamic Cultural Center through a referendum.

After refusing the project, the mayor of Quebec had questioned «our system of governance» which gives «49 people (...) the right of life and death on a project that has a significant sociological impact on the city». He also recalled that Muslims wishing to be buried there now have a square of 500 spots in a multi-confessional cemetery that has just been set up in Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures.