Winnipeg mosque serving area Muslims

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This article was published 20/11/2021 (1386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the recent completion of its funeral home, Winnipeg’s biggest mosque now offers services for both the living and the dead.

“If you’re coming to the mosque anyway, it’s right here,” says longtime volunteer funeral director Abdul Aziz of the new facility attached to the Grand Mosque on Waverley Street.

“It’s more convenient, it’s faster and we are control of the process.”

The first and only Muslim funeral facility in Manitoba began offering body-washing services early in 2021, about 18 months after construction began on the 1,100-square-foot addition.

The new facility allows the Muslim community to prepare bodies for burial within the mosque instead of travelling to rented space in a North End funeral home as was practice for decades, says Aziz. Muslims do not embalm bodies and generally hold the funeral and burial within 24 to 48 hours after death.

He said the cost of a funeral has decreased about $1,000, now running about $2,100 per funeral, not including the burial plot, says Aziz, adding community members with limited finances are always accommodated somehow.

“There’s never been a funeral that’s refused for lack of money or no money,” he says.

In the first 10 months of operation, staff and volunteers have already prepared 56 bodies for burial, including 15 stillborn or preterm infants, which exceeds the total of previous years, says Sidi Abdulle, community services manager for the Manitoba Islamic Association, which runs the funeral home.

Connected to the mosque by a wide hallway, the new facility is not a licensed funeral home but a body-preparation facility, said Aziz.

“We are a funeral home, but we advocate for the family,” he explained.

The 550-square-foot facility features marble floors and wainscotting, a walk-in cooler accommodating three bodies on metal gurneys, and a washing facility with an overhead hoist to ease transferring bodies. Equipped with a separate ventilation system to avoid transferring odours to the mosque’s prayer hall and gym, the new space also features a viewing area for family, still unfurnished.

As soon as possible after a death, six volunteers of the same gender as the deceased wash the body with soap and water, then with camphor water, and finally wrap it in several pieces of white cotton and lay the body into the plain plywood coffin.

During the entire process, the body is covered from shoulders to ankle to maintain the dignity of the deceased.

Locating the funeral facility within the mosque cuts down on transfer time between the former rented space and the mosque an offers spiritual and emotional support to surviving family members because their loved one is cared for within their own community, says Aziz.

“It’s the biggest comfort knowing the body is in your mosque, in your care,” he says.

Funerals generally take place after 2 p.m. prayers at the mosque, with a short service and then off to burial at a cemetery near the edge of the city.

Although new to running funerals, Abdulle says her years of experience in working with aid and development organizations internationally prepared her for this new challenge of helping families in their time of loss.

“To feel what a family is feeling, to take care of this in a proper way for the family, I feel like maybe it’s a blessing,” says Abdulle, who moved to Winnipeg from Syria two years ago.

The facility was constructed at a cost of about $600,000, funded by donations from the city’s Muslims. The first addition to the mosque since its completion in 2007, the funeral home wing is located at the south end of the building and matches the exterior height and finishes of the existing structure.

Brenda.suderman@freepress.mb.ca

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