Religious sites in Sacramento honor the dead in different ways

The neighborhoods are home to numerous historic cemeteries, with tombstones rising out of the dry, neatly trimmed grass.

One of them, however, is located about 15 minutes outside the city limits, at the intersection of Jackson Road and Eagles Nest Road south of Mather. Here we find the only Muslim cemetery in the area.

The Greater Sacramento Muslim Cemetery, which held its first burial in 2000, serves a growing faith community where being buried among other Muslim believers is a religious obligation. The closest Muslim cemetery is about 40 minutes away in Lodi.

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Many of these religious burial sites and memorials have been built in the last few decades and have become invaluable to Sacramento’s growing population beyond its predominantly Protestant and Catholic populations. While they may not be as numerous as the dozens of Christian and multifaith cemeteries scattered throughout the county, these places are vital to honoring an important part of the human condition – passing from this world.

“It gives me the opportunity to comfort people who are discouraged and grieving,” said Salem Ammar, cemetery manager at GSMC, of ​​his role. “I enjoy it. I try my best to comfort them and remind them that this life is truly temporary.”

When the Excelsior Fire spread rapidly through the same dry grasslands where the cemetery is located in mid-June, caretakers and firefighters rushed to protect the cemetery.

Protect the cemetery at all costs

On June 16, the day of Eid al-Adha, one of the most important Islamic holidays of the year, crowds of people crowded between rows of gravestones at the Greater Sacramento Muslim Cemetery. Many Muslims take the time on this day to visit their loved ones, including those who have passed away.

But on the same day, the Excelsior devoured entire building structures and charred hundreds of acres of earth in a sooty black color.

“I was talking to a tractor driver and then I saw that the fire was coming towards us fast, very fast,” said Salem Ammar, the cemetery manager. “So I told him, ‘My friend, come down and let’s go, let’s evacuate.’ I started telling people to go away.”

At about the same time, Ammar saw a patrol car drive into the cemetery parking lot. The police officer who got out of the car also ordered the visitors to leave the grounds.

Firefighters worked hard to contain the fire before it could overtake the cemetery, and by the next morning it was fully under control. In total, the fire had covered nearly 360 hectares of land, including the fields surrounding the cemetery, but left the cemetery itself untouched.

“We would like to express our gratitude to the first responders, as administrators of the cemetery, but also on behalf of the Muslim community,” said Ammar.

Buried among believers

Although some contemporary institutions of Islamic law consider it permissible to bury Muslims in Muslim cemeteries or even among members of other faiths in non-Muslim cemeteries, these cases occur only out of necessity.

“The idea came from several older community members who saw a gap and were keen to have a cemetery exclusively for Muslims in the greater Sacramento area,” says Farrukh Saeed, chairman of the GSMC board of trustees.

Ammar pointed out, however, that when a family approaches the GSMC with a request for burial, the cemetery administrators do not bother to check whether the family members are Muslims, but trust the family members at their word.

At the GSMC and other Muslim cemeteries, the bodies of the deceased are first washed and then prayers are said in preparation for burial. They are then wrapped in a simple white sheet before being buried in the ground.

Space usage at the cemetery has increased over the years, both Saeed and Ammar said. The Muslim community in Sacramento has grown due to the influx of refugees and asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Sacramento County, one of the most diverse counties in California and indeed in the entire United States, an estimated 37,000 Muslims lived in 2020, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. Today, years after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the number is likely even higher.

In 2021, about 9,700 Afghans lived in Sacramento County—more than anywhere else in the country. Another 2,000 lived in nearby Yolo, Sutter, Placer and El Dorado counties. Another 1,700 Afghan refugees were expected to settle in the Sacramento area by the end of the year.

The cemetery plays such an important role in Sacramento’s Muslim community, Ammar said, that people began to recognize the chief gravedigger outside the cemetery in public.

“He became a fixture,” Ammar said. “People know him like a celebrity.”

On average, about 250 people are now buried in the cemetery each year.

Cemeteries offer sacred places

Matt Hamasaki is the pastor of the Buddhist Church of Sacramento, a temple belonging to a Japanese branch of Buddhism called Jodo Shinshu. While many of the temple members are buried at East Lawn Memorial Park in Elk Grove or Sacramento Memorial Lawn, Hamasaki said Some members choose a relatively new option: burial in the church.

When the temple first offered the opportunity to purchase niches in 2014, a lottery system had to be used to allocate spaces because there were more applicants than available niches.

“The previous generations foresaw their own deaths and helped their children when that time came. That’s why they bought tombs where they could be buried long before their deaths,” Hamasaki said. “So the tombs they bought were not near the temple. If they had known that this would happen, they might have waited or bought the tomb there.”

He said temple leaders are seeing that temple burial is becoming more popular now that the option is available.

Hamasaki also pointed to Obon, an annual Buddhist holiday in Japan to remember the dead that takes place in mid-July or August. It is a cultural example of honoring deceased loved ones that is not necessarily tied to a physical location such as a grave.

One of the largest Obon festivals in the United States will take place in San Jose, attracting tens of thousands of participants. The Buddhist Church of Sacramento will also host events to celebrate Obon.

“Supposedly the ghosts are coming back and it is more of a celebration than a somber affair,” Hamasaki said.

Some of the GSMC’s caretakers and custodians have been working at the cemetery for decades. And in terms of space, the GSMC’s current area will likely be enough to bury an entire generation on the grounds over the next few decades.

Ammar said he and other cemetery caretakers have considered visiting firefighters and police with dozens of doughnuts and flowers or writing thank-you letters for their work in saving the cemetery.

“We express our deepest gratitude to the first responders,” he said. “Those who do not thank people do not thank God.”