ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS: ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - 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. . First Muslim Cemetery Opens in Alaska
Mark Alexander
2 comments:
Alaska???
For God's sake!
IS that a pun? Al-aksa/Alaska?
I prefer mine baked.
What the hell, in Alaska, at minus fourty C, the stiffs will be frozen stiffs, whichever way they face.
In a uk relatives' grave yard, the neat rows of crosses and flowered graves are being challenged by an ever growing mound of arabic scripts facing east.
At first, years ago, they did not care for their dead and the relatives placed just a few pieces of wood with hand written script, gradually fading away.
Now they bear large stone ornaments with carved and gilded scripts, challenging the Christians' burials, and proclaiming their gathering wealth and influence, even in death.
What next?
Will they say the crosses offend them, and ask for their removal?
Don't laugh, it may come true.
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