A personal choice

Photo Stevens LeBlanc
Mohamed Kesri has been working for 20 years now for the muslim community of Quebec to have a cemetery.

Nicolas Lachance

Sunday, 30 July, 2017 00:00

UPDATE
Sunday, 30 July, 2017 00:00

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After 20 years of struggle to usher in a muslim cemetery in Quebec city, the project manager holds out hope and says he will go to the end of his mandate so that the community can have the choice of his burial place.

Algerian origin, Mohamed Kesri is established in Quebec for over 30 years and married to a Québécoise (see other text).

For the past 20 years, he works to find a common ground for the islamic cultural Centre of Québec (CCIQ) to acquire, through private transactions, and establish a cemetery.

“Once the death approach, people will be able to choose. It is an individual choice, finally. This is not the choice of an organization, a mosque or a company. It is in the will of the people that it’s going to be written, ” says Mr. Kesri.

“It may be that even I won’t go into a muslim cemetery, while I was in charge of the project. What I want is to have choice, ” he explains in an interview with the Newspaper.

A right

The ideal for the community is finding a site already zoned cemetery and that is to sell.

For the moment, the project fell to the water every time a transaction was on the point of conclude.

However, what wants the community, he said, is to have the same rights as other religions or organizations that have cemeteries of confession.

It is not an accommodation, ” said Mr. Kesri, but a right, especially that the community wants to acquire a plot of land way private. “We want to be equal. The charter of rights and freedoms gives us this right. It does not require people to come to our cemetery ” shows the surveyor at retirement.

Hope

A month ago, Mr Kesri has resigned from his position on the board of CCIQ, in order to spend more time with his wife. However, he kept the mandate of the cemetery.

“I, I represents an organization. If I didn’t want to, I would not have taken. But, I’m not doing this in a personal capacity. The people who are going to judge me, I judge it as representative of the muslim community, CCIQ “, ” he says.

“The weather makes its case”

Love, universal values, and political stability have led the family Kesri to settle in Quebec, in an environment quiet and safe to raise children.

Mohamed Kesri, head of the project of the cemetery, is a perfect example of the integration in Quebec. “I think that it can’t be more than that. I’m not a conservative, I am married to a catholic. I compromised, and compromised. The children, they decide. They do not practice neither to the right nor to the left. It does not break the head. They have universal values “, he stressed.

Love story

Mr. Kesri has fallen in love with a Quebec, catholic, while he was studying at Laval University thanks to a scholarship, surveyor of his country, in the 1970s.

The couple is in a civil union in Algeria, as Mr. Kesri had to return to do his military service and work.

And then, after a dozen years in North Africa, they returned to settle with their two very young children in Quebec, because of the political situation, which was tense. The same day they bought their first house, the prime minister René Lévesque died, ” he recalls.

Patience

He never felt in danger in Quebec. He does not believe that Quebecers are intolerant, on the contrary.

He argues, however, that Quebec could be more patient with the immigrants it welcomes. “Here, you push me, with my cultural background, to be treated immediately,” he said. However, he says that the time does its job and that second-generation immigrants are, prima facie, of Quebec.

“My children, they have the air of native-born Quebeckers. See, the time made his case. It would have to be that Quebecers are more patients. There will be no more this problem, because we, first, we will die and our children will be assimilated by the language, the way we live, by the way of thinking “, he concludes.

The politicians have broken their promises

The rejection of the draft cemetery disappoints the community

Photo Stevens LeBlanc

Mohamed Labidi, president of CCIQ, said he was disappointed by the political class, but notes that “the sympathy of the people is always there.”

The page is difficult to turn to the muslim community of Quebec, six months after the killing, largely in response to the hateful messages that are received at the mosque and the rejection of the project of cemetery in Saint-Apollinaire.

“The wounds are not quite healed, especially with the outcome of the referendum,” says Mohamed Labidi, president of the islamic cultural Centre of Québec (CCIQ).

“It reopened the wounds. There is the sadness. The malaise persists in the community, ” he said in an interview with the Newspaper.

He also claims that the politicians have broken the promises they made in the days following the tragedy. “We expect the realization of some of the promises of our elected officials, such as the proposed cemetery. We were told : “You will have your cemetery”. We see that, ultimately, we are still in the impasse “, he explains.

He recalled, however, that in the aftermath of the attack, the muslim community of Quebec has benefited from a huge outpouring of generosity and support on the part of Quebecers.

“Up until the referendum, we thought that we had large openings in the company. This referendum has just muddying the waters. We saw a lot of bad memories “, said Mr Labidi.

This misunderstanding is compounded with the parcel hate received at the mosque last week.

Mr Labidi knows that ” this is not the whole society that is like this “, but only a very small minority ” is blinded by false ideas “.

In reality, he says, the movement support is always present. “The sympathy of the people is always there. It is always manifested. All the time, we have people who come to us consolidate, ” Mr Labidi. The union with the people is progressing despite these pitfalls. “

The Guineans also

The community in guinea, who has lost two of its members in the attack, is also very disappointed with the outcome of the referendum on a cemetery. The president of the Association of Guineans in Quebec, Souleymane Bah, denounces the extreme caution of the political class.

“I think the policies have not played their role to get to be aware of [the population] “, he says, saying they are disappointed that other mayors in Quebec have not been raised to defend the will of the muslims have a cemetery that is devoted to them.

“We must not be afraid to get wet in politics “, lance-t-il.

— With the collaboration of Dominique Lelièvre