Local doctor working to develop Vegas’ first Muslim cemetery
After several upsetting culture clashes with local commercial funeral homes, a long-time local doctor is leading an effort to develop the valley’s first Muslim cemetery near a mosque and Islamic school a few miles south of McCarran International Airport.
Dr. Osama Haikal said the private, not-for-profit cemetery would provide local Muslims with a place to practice traditional funeral rites, which call for the dead to be washed, wrapped in plain cloth and buried as soon as possible facing Mecca in a grave with no casket and only modest markings.
“We take the phrase ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ literally,” he said.
Such accommodations are not easy to find in Las Vegas, something Haikal said he learned personally four years ago when his wife died from leukemia and he had to fight the funeral home over the arrangements at a “time of calamity” for him and his four children.
Haikal said the roughly 2 acre cemetery site on Bermuda Road between Warm Springs and Robindale should be able to serve the region’s 15,000 to 18,000 Muslims for 75 years.
But some nearby residents oppose the placement of a cemetery in what is now a residential neighborhood, albeit one still marked by large, empty lots.
John Webb lives next door to the proposed cemetery site on an acre he bought 20 years ago and built a house on about 15 years ago. He worries a cemetery next door will hurt the value of his home and make it harder for him to sell one day.
“I would share a property line with it,” he said. “It would be viewable from my bedroom window.”
Webb said his opposition has nothing to do with religion. He said he has no problem with the Omar Haikal Islamic Academy and Mosque that border his property to the north.
“It wouldn’t matter who was proposing it. It’s still a cemetery and a commercial business in a residential neighborhood,” he said.
Though Webb’s is the only home directly bordering the cemetery site, he isn’t the only neighbor complaining. When the proposal came before the Paradise Township advisory board on Jan. 13, opponents outnumbered supporters 32 to 1. When it came before the Clark County Planning Commission on Feb. 17, the opposition was more like 100 to 1.
Even so, both panels overwhelmingly approved the cemetery with some minor conditions on hours of operation (daytime only), landscaping (to be installed prior to opening), parking (at least 25 spaces) and total number of burial plots (no more than 1,200).
“I just don’t really understand what’s going on,” said Webb, who filed an appeal of the Planning Commission’s decision.
Clark County Commissioners are expected to consider the project on March 18. The neighborhood opposition presents something of a theological problem, according to Dr. Aslam Abdullah, director of the Islamic Society of Nevada.
While his organization fully supports what Haikal is trying to do, he said, respect for one’s neighbors is an important part of the Muslim faith.
“We don’t have a place. We need a place. But we don’t want a place at the expense of our neighbors,” Abdullah said of the cemetery. “If the neighbors are objecting, we need to convince them. And if they can’t be convinced, I think we should listen to them.”
He went on to note that an earlier effort by a different group to build an Islamic cemetery and funeral home in the northeast valley ended with a fire at the construction site near Lamb Boulevard and Carey Avenue in 2012. Abdullah said the cause of the fire was never determined, but he believes it was intentionally set and considers it a hate crime.
Haikal said his group has gone to great lengths to communicate with nearby residents and make the project as unobtrusive as possible. There will be no signs out front or monuments on the grounds, and the roughly 1,200 square-foot funeral home will resemble a modest house surrounded by an expanse of grass.
“A person driving by, no one will ever figure out what it is,” he said.
The facility will meet all health codes, including the requirement that bodies be placed in caskets for transport. Though caskets won’t be used in burials, concrete vaults will be placed around the bodies to protect the integrity of the graves, Haikal said.
The Islamic faith does not permit cremation, but Haikal said he would never consider operating a crematorium in the neighborhood anyway, even if his religion allowed it.
Haikal is originally from Egypt but has spent the past 30 years in Las Vegas, where he works as a gastroenterologist. He helped establish the mosque and private school on Eldorado Lane, just northeast of the cemetery site.
Since the academy opened in 2001, he said, some local Muslims have moved to the neighborhood to be closer to the mosque and the school, which now enrolls about 200 students from preschool through eighth grade. Haikal said people deserve a proper place to bury their loved ones close to where they live, worship and send their children to school.
“This has become our community,” he said.
Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Follow @RefriedBrean on Twitter.