The leaders of a tiny upstate town some 180 miles from Ground Zero are demanding that a Muslim group dig up and remove two bodies they buried on their land.
They say the group, a Sufi religious order, is maintaining an illegal cemetery in Sidney, N.Y., - pop. 5,993.
A spokesman for the Osmanli Naksibendi Hakkani order claims the town okayed the burial ground five years ago and is singling them out now simply because they’re Muslims.
“I think it’s out of bigotry,” said Hans Hass, who also is the head of the local EMS unit. “They don’t like us being here, even though we’ve been here since 2002.”
Town supervisor Bob McCarthy raised objections to their cemetery right around the time protests erupted in downtown Manhattan over plans to build an Islamic Center near Ground Zero, Hass said.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” he told The Daily News.
McCarthy, a Republican, said his objections have nothing to do with whether or not they are Muslim. “People just can’t go bury a body in a field,” he told The News.
Confronted with a December 2005 letter to the group from the town’s code enforcement officer stating that “a cemetery at this location would be an allowed use,” McCarthy said, “I’m not a lawyer.”
The town’s lawyer, Joseph Ermeti, did not return calls or an e-mail requesting a comment.
The Sufis bought the 50-acre sheep farm in 2002 and set aside 650 square feet to be used as a cemetery. It wasn’t until November 2009 that it got its first guest.
“It was a brother of ours who died in a car accident in New Jersey,” Hass said. “I filed a burial permit with the town and everything was okay.”
Over the summer, a second man was buried there - a Long Islander who died of stomach cancer, Hass said.
“Once again, I filed a burial permit and there were no objections,” he said.
Then last month, the Sidney town board passed “an injunction prohibiting the burying of bodies on private property in violation of” state and town laws.
That injunction appears to fly in the face of the town zoning code, which permits graveyards on private property as long as they’re in a contiguous 15 acre area.
Also, there are no state regulations concerning burial on private property, according to the state’s Division of Cemeteries.
Hass said Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the controversial Islamic Center near Ground Zero, is also a Sufi but not connected to them.
“The thing many people don’t understand is that we’re hated by Islamic fundamentalists and Osama Bin Laden types too, because they see Sufis as heretics,” said Hass, a convert originally from Maine. “Some people just see Muslims as all the same.
“They’re not really interested in who we are.”