Should one be buried or cremated? That’s the one question that has Japanese Muslims in a quandary, as the community struggles with the lack of burial plots. The situation has worsened in recent times with some in the Asian country taking to social media and making hostile comments to block Muslims from acquiring plots of land to bury their dead according to their faith.
But what is this development call for burial sites in Japan? And how does the Asian country respond to those applications?
We get you the full story.
In 2020, the Muslim arrangement of Beppu requested the approval of the city of Hiji, on the southern island of Kyushu, to identify a cemetery where Muslims can be installed.
Similar requests have also been made across the country. For example, a resident of Miyagi prefecture had asked Governor Yoshihiro Murai for a funeral plot, saying that living in Japan “is very difficult” for his circle of relatives due to the lack of graves.
This call to funeral plots occurs when Japan has a construction in the number of Muslims in the country. The number of Muslims living in this Asian country have an update update significantly in recent years, from 110,000 Muslims in 2010 to 350,000 Muslims in 2023.
It is said that maximum Muslims in the country have been for educational opportunities or to locate the work. And those who are hired in Japan rarely need to go home. This building in the number of Muslims has already led to a building in the amount of mosques: the position of devout worship. He went from 4 in 1980 to a massive 149 in June 2024.
To date, Japan only has 10 major places with burial sites in Japan with affiliations.
However, the request for such burial grounds from Muslims is facing stiff opposition from some local Japanese. In the case of the burial plot in the Miyagi prefecture, there have been over 400 complaints against the proposed cemetery, with many claiming that it could be a “potential health hazard,” such as contamination of local water supplies.
Some on social media, who oppose the cemetery have even written: “If you stay with Japanese customs and ways, you don’t come to Japan. “Another user wrote on social media: “Burial cemeteries are one of the strategies used through Muslims to invade foreign countries. “
In the case of the proposed cemetery in Hiji, Mayor Abe Tetsuya has long been opposed to it. Shortly after winning the mayoral election last September, he said, “This is not just an issue for the town. We need to get the national government to provide guidelines. It’s a matter of ordinances and a constitutional problem.”
Incidentally, Japanese law does not prohibit interment. However, there are ordinances banning burials in some areas on public hygiene grounds.
Muhammad Tahir Abbas Khan, the leader of the Muslim Beppu settlement, deplores this situation, attributing it to deceptive relationships on social media. “There are countless false statements and it’s hard to put them in before,” he told the South China Morning Post.
Speaking on the same, he said that he has taken legal action against a prominent YouTuber whose been making incorrect and misleading attacks. “I cannot believe I am having to take this step,” said Khan, who has lived in Japan since 2001 and became a Japanese national more than a decade ago.
According to Khan, the YouTuber says that he is looking in Japan in a majority Muslim country and that his efforts to make sure that a cemetery was only the first level of this campaign.
“At first, I get an idea that I respond because it would only make things worse, but now I see that many other people take his words and the percentage,” Khan said in the South China Morning Post.
He added that there were also several statements that taxpayers are used for cemetery. Khan said he was misleading and that the proposed cemetery prices would increase through the Beppu Muslim Agreement.
“His objections are all garbage,” Khan told South China Morning Post to South China Post. “I heard thousands of negative comments, and I still place it in the complicated perceive how many other people are misleading through what they said in the media and social networks. “
To combat opposite to this misinformation, the association, under Khan, also began several awareness initiatives. But Khan says that the mayor’s opposition remains an obstacle.
Addressing Kyodo News, he added that a cemetery would continue to continue. “We abandon the graves for the next generation. “
And Khan and the Muslims are not alone; They discovered that of Miyagi Gov Yoshihiro Murai, who stated last December, that the cemetery “had to be carried out despite criticism. “
“I feel that the government should be more concerned about the lack of attention to multiculturalism, even though it claims to be a multicultural society,” said Murai to Kyodo News. “Even if I am criticised, we have to do something about this,” he added.
He also said: “We comply with the desires of those people. “
The Muslims’ call for burial is in variance to Japan’s tradition of cremation. Traditionally, in Japan, most people are cremated; one report even claims that Japan has the world’s highest rate of cremation. A 2012 report by the Cremation Society of Great Britain recorded Japan’s cremation rate, the highest in the world, as 99.9 per cent. Taiwan has the second highest rate with 90.8 per cent, followed by Hong Kong (89.9 per cent), Switzerland (84.6 per cent), Thailand (80 per cent), and Singapore (79.7 per cent).
It is said that when Buddhism has spread to Japan, cremation has also spread. But in 1873, Japan banned cremation, claiming that the bodies bruised disrespectful of the dead and endangered public morality and that the resulting smoke is a problem of public fitness.
In May 1875, less than two years after it passed, the ban was reversed. Two decades later, in 1897, the Japanese government ruled that anyone who died of a communicable disease had to be cremated.
And today, cremation is the selection of the maximum part.
With inputs from agencies