Negotiating faith and
space in contexts of
death and diversity.
Until quite recently, one of the core policies of France’s far-right Front National party – whose leader Marine Le Pen contests the presidential run-off with centrist Emmanuel Macron in this Sunday’s vote – was its pledge to expel and repatriate millions of non-European migrants.
To understand the recent controversies around Muslim cemeteries in the US, we need to look at demographic trends and new patterns of Muslim settlement and integration, as well as rising Islamophobia.
Cemetery policy doesn’t make the news very often, so when it does I tend to sit up and take notice. A report in the Guardian on 7 May therefore did catch my eye: “Cemetery finds sensitive solution to shortage of space”, read the headline.[1] The article was about the problem of cemeteries running out of space for burial and the “sensitive solution” pioneered by one particular cemetery, the City of London cemetery in Newham,
