Discriminating Against the Dead

A few weeks ago, more than 150 friends gathered to honor Kalid Al-Bakri’s life. They remembered him as a kind and good man, gunned down by robbers as he filled in for his brother at a South St. Paul convenience store. Then they lowered him—in accordance with the rules of his faith—into the ground at the Islamic cemetery in Roseville. Islamic rule number 627 states, “It is not permitted to bury a Muslim in the graveyard of the non-Muslims, nor to bury a non-Muslim in the graveyard of the Muslims.” On American soil, you can’t discriminate against the living, but the dead may be a different story. Cemeteries can and do exercise prejudice—most often by creed.

Most Jewish cemeteries, for example, won’t bury gentiles. “We’ve talked about it,” said Michael Morris, general manager of the Minneapolis Jewish Cemetery at 70th and Penn, one of several Jewish cemeteries in the Twin Cities. “We have an area in our cemetery that is designated for mixed couples,” he explained. This flexibility is a relatively new phenomenon among Jewish burial grounds in the last 10 to 15 years. “And our mixed couple area is a separate section—it could even be considered a separate cemetery, since it isn’t technically part of the same grounds.”

Furthermore, the gentile plots have to be purchased by a Jewish individual for the non-Jewish partner. “If a non-Jew wanted to be buried here without any connection to a Jewish spouse, well, then the answer would have to be no,” said Morris. “But then, I don’t know how many gentiles are interested in calling up and buying a lot in a Jewish cemetery.”

Which gets at the gist of the matter. Under what circumstances would someone want to be buried in a cemetery representing somebody else’s faith? “I did actually have a gentleman call up,” Morris recalled. “He was not a Jew but he said he had great admiration for the Jewish people. He was now at the end of his life and wanted to be buried among Jews. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to accommodate the guy. I felt it was a little unfortunate, but that was the decision of the board of trustees.”

Morris said he doesn’t feel great about having to turn someone away, but he wants to be clear that at a certain point, you have to draw the line. “A Jewish cemetery is a Jewish cemetery because it is designated for Jews and Jewish law requires Jews to be buried among Jews.”

Ron Gjerde, executive director of the Minnesota Cemetery Association, said he for one doesn’t think exclusivity in burial plots is much of an issue. “Most cemeteries today are nonsectarian and nondenominational, and even for most religious cemeteries, faith is not necessarily an issue in buying a plot,” he said. “I believe you can be buried in a Catholic cemetery whether or not you are a Catholic.”

If you own land in the country, and you have your heart set on resting in peace in your own little apple orchard, could you? “Probably not,” said Gjerde. “Let’s put it this way. Any individual or organization could follow the laws and work with their local communities to establish a cemetery—more or less. But we would be kind of digressing if we were to do that. Way back when, there were a lot of these ‘family cemeteries’ that were established on the family farm. Well, the family farm has gone by the wayside, and those cemeteries have too, ending up essentially abandoned.”

To be buried in your own backyard is, of course, a most extreme way to isolate your remains from both the living and the dead. Most humans seem to want something in between: to be buried among their kind. Perhaps allowing this discrimination in death does something to encourage its opposite among the living.—Jeannine Ouellette


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