New Pembina Valley cemetery, mosque helping Muslims feel more at home

Rosanna Hempel · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 07, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Morden's increasing Muslim assemblage has a caller spot to travel unneurotic and pray, and soon they'll besides person a last resting spot for their loved ones.

The City of Morden and the Pembina Valley Muslim assemblage person arranged to acceptable speech onshore for a Muslim burial tract astatine Lakeside Cemetery, the confederate Manitoba city's newest burial site.

It volition go the 2nd determination offering these services successful Manitoba, aft Winnipeg.

"This is precise important," Sk Rubaiyat Zaman, a manager astatine Morden's mosque, told CBC News past month.

"Whenever decease happens successful the family, we person to nonstop them to Winnipeg," helium said. "It's a precise cumbersome and precise lengthy procedure."

The area's Muslim assemblage has grown to astir 150 families successful the past 5 years — coming from countries including Eritrea, India and Somalia — and galore are choosing to stay because they consciousness harmless and welcomed, said Zaman, who arrived from Dhaka, Bangladesh, astir 4 years ago.

He says his lad was 4 years aged erstwhile the household moved during the COVID-19 pandemic, and helium wasn't instantly capable to acquisition the assemblage activities and supplication offered by mosques owed to nationalist wellness restrictions astatine the time.

"I ever felt that need — similar helium didn't spot our culture, truthful that's however it each started," Zaman said.

The summation of a section Muslim cemetery and mosque, which opened successful November, volition assistance Muslims "have the necessities for the heart" adjacent by and consciousness adjacent much rooted, Raman said.

According to Islamic custom, graves are oriented otherwise than successful a accepted Christian cemetery truthful the deceased tin look the Kaaba successful Mecca, Saudi Arabia, considered to beryllium the holiest tract successful Islam. Graves are besides separated from non-Muslim burial places.

"If I privation to physique a procreation present … this spot is really helping america bash that," Raman said.

Along with the precocious incorporated non-profit Pembina Valley Islamic Society, helium worked with the metropolis to get everything right.

The archetypal 30 oregon truthful sites volition beryllium acceptable this year, Zaman says. Eventually, 1 country of the cemetery volition clasp 78 spots for Muslim burials, on with a designated abstraction for ceremonial prayers.

Being inclusive was important for the city's manager of parks and municipality forestry, Shawn Dias.

"It conscionable allows them to person much growth. It allows them to person much transportation to the region, and it shows that, you know, [with] unfastened arms, the City of Morden is consenting to prosecute and enactment these groups," Dias said.

"It's been a truly affirmative experience. It's been a learning experience."

Steve Reynolds, the enforcement manager of Regional Connections Immigrant Services — which works with newcomers successful the Pembina Valley country — credits this benignant of attack with helping newcomers consciousness astatine home.

The area has welcomed radical from much than 130 countries, Reynolds says, including galore who have stayed for the prime of their children's education and the peaceful, harmless and welcoming neighbourhoods.

He points to the astir 80 to 95 per cent retention rates for imperishable residents 1 twelvemonth in, "which is truly high," to amusement efforts person mostly been successful.

Syed Faizan Nasir, a manager of the Pembina Valley Islamic Society, says the caller burial tract and mosque are already making a quality for the community.

Before mosque organizers rented abstraction successful a Morden portion mall, Muslims would commune astatine location oregon astatine enactment or, if determination was time, question to the mosque successful Winkler, astir 10 kilometres away, Nasir said.

"It was not precise convenient for us, due to the fact that … 3 prayers are during the enactment hours, right, truthful it is not imaginable to go."

He says the caller installation has kept immoderate newcomers from migrating to larger centres.

"We person a mates of friends who were readying to determination from here, and they decided not to move."

Nasir says the Islamic nine hopes to go a charitable enactment and yet bargain onshore to physique a imperishable mosque successful Morden.

WATCH | Morden Muslims volition soon person a last resting spot for their loved ones: