Politicising death: how Muslim burial plots are contested and negotiated 'on the ground'

• In Event: Racial and Ethnic Minorities Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table Two: Religious Social-Political Racism and Xenophobia

Abstract

Although extensive research has examined Muslim visibility in Western Europe through debates on headscarves and mosque construction, the politicisation of Muslim cemeteries remains comparatively understudied. Cemeteries, however, are considered highly symbolic places where inclusion, identity, and belonging are negotiated, and research suggests that Muslim burial plots in Western Europe are publicly and politically contested. This paper contributes to this scarce yet important literature by examining how the meaning and accommodation of dedicated Muslim burial plots are negotiated in Flemish municipal cemeteries. Drawing on 21 semi-structured interviews with cemetery managers, municipal officials, alderpersons, funeral sector representatives, and Muslim advocates, the study shows how actors structure negotiations over the accommodation of dedicated burial plots through three moral-political grammars. First, respondents draw on a moral-political grammar of equality and neutrality to frame dedicated plots either as legitimate forms of inclusion within a state that recognises religion, or as unlawful exceptions that violate equal treatment. Second, respondents invoke a moral-political grammar of (the ‘crisis’ of) multiculturalism by presenting cemeteries as microcosms of society, where Muslim burials are alternatively framed as markers of recognition and belonging, or as signs of segregation and failed integration. Third, actors intensify these debates through a grammar of moral panic, linking Muslim burial plots to imagined futures of Islamisation and demographic ‘takeover’. The results of this study suggest that debates on Muslim burial plots should be understood against the backdrop of broader debates on multiculturalism, in which death is politicised to such an extent that the so-called ‘integration’ of Muslims is contested even after death.

Author

• Eva Verschueren, University of Antwerp