LOCAL AUTHORITIES throughout the State should make more burial spaces available for Muslims as, currently, there is just one graveyard in the Republic where they can be buried, a spokesman for the community in Ireland has said.
Ali Selim, secretary of the Irish Council of Imams and based at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Dublin's Clonskeagh, said: "If a Muslim dies in Cork or Galway he or she has to be brought to Newlands Cross cemetery in Dublin for burial."
He noted that Muslims are regular visitors to the graves of relatives, arising from their belief that "the soul of a dead person can feel your presence at the graveside".
He said such visits were very difficult for people who lived at great distances from Dublin and that steps to relieve this "would be a great favour" to the Republic's Muslim community.
According to the 2006 census there are 32,500 Muslims in the State, but this is believed to be considerably short of the true figure.
Imam Hussein Halawa, chairman of the Irish Council of Imams and imam of the Islamic Cultural Centre in Clonskeagh, has put the real figure at approximately 45,000, made up of about 50 nationalities.
Meanwhile, Judith Hoad of the "Bury Me Green" group has called for the setting up of natural burial grounds throughout the State.
Bury Me Green was set up in Dublin in 2005 with the aim of promoting environmentally friendly burials. These would involve no chemicals being used on corpses,which would be buried in "baskets" or "eco-pods" made from natural materials.
The remains would not be buried at a depth below four feet as bacterial activity decreased with depth and, as she explained, "you become compost more quickly that way".
She favoured woodlands in particular as locations for such burial grounds, where remains would not be buried in lines but between trees, where this could be done.
Grass in such grounds should not be shorter than four inches, to slow down water absorption, she said. Such woodlands would make for attractive locations and an atmosphere where people might have family picnics, she said.
No large or permanent monuments or gravestones would be allowed, but she did favour meadow flowers being grown in such grounds.
Ms Hoad said there were already over 200 such natural burial grounds in the UK, since the first one opened there in 1993.
While not opposed to cremation, she pointed out that studies in the UK had shown that between 12 per cent and 16 per cent of dioxins in the atmosphere over England alone were caused by crematoriums.