AUBURN – After agreeing to dedicate part of the cemetery for Muslim burials, officials at Gracelawn Memorial Park were swamped with calls Tuesday from people concerned about whether the gesture would disrupt the rest of the grounds.

The short answer: It will not.

According to Gracelawn Executive Director Dan Fuller, most of the callers Tuesday were troubled by the fact that Muslims bury their dead without coffins. In the Muslim culture, bodies are buried without caskets so there is nothing between the deceased and the earth.

Muslim bodies will indeed be buried without coffins. But Fuller said many people were misled into believing the bodies will be lain directly into the soil.

“That’s not happening here,” Fuller said. “Because of our cemetery regulations, the body has to go into a concrete vault.”

Burying a body without a coffin or vault presents no danger to the environment, Fuller said. But the cemetery has always used underground vaults and will continue to do so in Muslim burials.

Callers were also worried about the Muslim custom of using lines from the Quran etched on memorial stones, Fuller said. The concern there was that the memorials might mar the aesthetic beauty of the rest of the cemetery.

Fuller said the memorial stones that will mark the graves of Muslims will be flat, bronze markers laid against the earth, like the rest of the grounds. There will be no disruption to the appearance of the cemetery, he said.

City officials announced Monday that an agreement had been worked out with Gracelawn to allow for proper Muslim burials. In the past, the deceased were typically taken to a cemetery in Portland that accommodates such interments.

-Mark LaFlamme

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