Neighborhood Bangladeshis Harass Bereaved Family In Jackson Heights For Cremating Son
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New York Times
October 4, 2008
Hindu-Muslim Family’s Choice of Cremation Arouses Anger
By ANNE BARNARD
Friends and family remember Shafayet Reja as an affectionate young man
who stayed up late to write poetry, danced exuberantly at weddings and
explored the faiths of his father and mother with an openheartedness
that led him to declare on his Facebook page, “I never get tired of
learning the new things that life has to offer.”
But within hours of his death on Sept. 10 after a car accident, his
memory — in fact, his very body — had become the object of a tug-of-
war over religious freedom and obligation. It began when his mother,
who was raised Hindu, and his father, who is Muslim, decided to have
his body cremated in the Hindu tradition, rather than burying him in a
shroud, as Islam prescribes.
His parents, Mina and Farhad Reja, say a small group of Muslims who do
not understand their approach to religion are trying to intimidate
them over the most private of family choices. “This is America,” Mrs.
Reja said. “This is a family decision.”
The couple say that people accosted them at their son’s funeral, that
an angry crowd threatened to boycott a shopping center they own in
Jackson Heights, Queens, and that on Sept. 13, two men they know
threatened to bomb and burn down the building.
The men they accused in a complaint filed with the police — one is a
doctor and the father of a close friend of Shafayet Reja, the other a
Bangladeshi business leader — say that they made no threats and deny
that they have called for a boycott. They say they and others simply
expressed their concern about what they see as a deep violation of
their religion and of the wishes of the son, who, according to some of
his college friends, had recently chosen Islam as his sole religion.
The Police Department’s hate crimes unit is investigating whether the
threats took place, whether they would constitute aggravated
harassment, and whether they qualify as bias crimes, which carry
tougher penalties, a spokesman for the department said. No charges
have been filed.
What is not in doubt is that the episode is a source of consternation,
from the Queens neighborhoods where Mr. Reja’s parents live and work
to their native Bangladesh, one of the world’s most populous Muslim
countries, where it has been national news.
The dispute has especially swept up several bustling blocks in Jackson
Heights, where dozens of businesses are Bengali. It had business
owners on edge during the busy shopping season before this week’s Id
al-Fitr festival. The festival marks the end of the Muslim holy month
of Ramadan and brings throngs of shoppers to dine and to buy jewelry
and sparkling traditional dresses.
The neighborhood is a place where business rivalries and family
arguments often intersect with disputes over Bangladesh politics,
especially in the case of Mrs. Reja, a prominent property owner and
outspoken advocate of the rights of Bangladesh’s religious minorities.
Her 1999 self-published book, “God on Trial,” angered some Muslims in
the neighborhood with its critique of Islamic fundamentalism.
The cremation dispute goes to the heart of a debate among Muslims in
America about what makes someone a Muslim — to some of the critics,
the fact that Shafayet Reja listed Islam as his religion on Facebook
is enough — and how to reconcile this country’s freedom of religion
with what some Muslims see as a communal obligation to uphold
religious observance.
But to the family, the dispute is a frightening imposition that they
say violates their civil rights.
“We have freedom of religion, and we have the Constitution,” said the
Rejas’ son Mishal, 19, who studies at Washington University in St.
Louis. “Why would they bother us? It’s none of their business. Even if
he was the most hard-core Muslim.”
To some Muslims, the fact that Shafayet Reja prayed and attended
mosques trumps his family’s wishes.
“It was the community’s business because the community knew he was a
Muslim,” said Junnun Choudhury, secretary of the Jamaica Muslim
Center, one of several mosques around the city whose worshipers came
to the funeral to plead with the family. “It is our job to bury him in
the Muslim way.”
Neither he nor any other mosque leader has been accused of making
threats, and there have been no further protests.
Abu Zafar Mahmood, an adviser to the Jackson Heights Bangladeshi
Business Association, said he was disturbed by the cremation but was
urging people not to confront Mrs. Reja. “It would be harmful,” he
said. “We have a multicultural community.”
Mrs. Reja said she brought up her children by attending both Hindu
temples and Muslim mosques. “Humanism is what I taught my children,”
she said. “I want to see my son as a perfect human being, and not as a
perfect religious person.”
Whether or not her son was beginning to move closer to Islam is
another thread in the tangle of hurt feelings and disagreements.
Shafayet Reja, 22, graduated from the State University of New York at
Stony Brook in 2007. He was living with his parents in Richmond Hill,
studying to be a licensed insurance broker.
He was also spending a lot of time at the Long Island home of Dr.
Khondeker Masud Rahman — who was eventually accused of threatening his
parents — and Dr. Rahman’s daughter, Farah, a friend from Stony
Brook.
Farah Rahman said that he had begun praying more often and talking to
Dr. Rahman about Islam, and that he had quarreled with his mother,
saying she blamed the religion unfairly for the mistakes of some of
its followers. He had even, she said in an interview, mentioned that
he wanted a Muslim burial. His family members and childhood friends
say he would have wanted his mother to choose.
On Sept. 2, Shafayet Reja broke the daily Ramadan fast with friends at
Stony Brook’s Muslim Students Association. Afterward, Farah Rahman was
in the car behind his when he lost control on a wet road. He was
hospitalized, and died on Sept. 10 without regaining consciousness.
When word spread that the family would hold both Muslim and Hindu
rites for their son and then have him cremated, the Rahmans and others
were upset. Father and daughter both asked the family to give him a
Muslim burial. They said the conversations were polite; the Rejas said
they were hostile.
Several dozen people, including the imams of the Jamaica Muslim Center
and other mosques, came to the funeral home in Richmond Hill on Sept.
12, to attend the Muslim rite and express objections to the cremation.
The Rejas say people crowded around them to press their case as they
wept beside their son’s body. “I was having my last moment with my
son,” Mrs. Reja said. “What gave them the guts to do that?”
The funeral staff called the police in part because the Rejas feared
the crowd would try to block the hearse going to the crematorium.
Mishal Reja stood in the door of the funeral home, asked the group to
leave the family in peace, and promised he would try to get the
cremation canceled — just to get them to leave, he said. The crowd
dispersed peacefully.
Later that day, Dr. Rahman, an anesthesiologist at Elmhurst Hospital
Center in Jackson Heights, spoke to a group of people breaking the
daily Ramadan fast at a restaurant across the street from the family’s
Bangladesh Plaza mall.
According to the Rejas, and a report in a local Bengali-language
newspaper, he called for a boycott of the mall and for shop owners
there to stop paying rent, though he denied that in an interview.
Afterward, some of the people from the restaurant gathered outside the
mall, waving their sandals in an insulting gesture and threatening to
boycott the mall, according to two men who run shops there, who did
not want to be quoted by name for fear of damaging business
relationships. One said that at least one person in the crowd
threatened to burn the building.
In the crowd, according to the merchants, was the secretary of the
Jackson Heights Bangladeshi Business Association, Zakaria Masud. Mr.
Masud, too, denied calling for a boycott, but said that protesting the
cremation was “a social obligation and a religious obligation.”
The next day, Mina Reja held a press conference at the mall, at which
she denounced the critics and asked for privacy.
Afterward, according to complaints the Rejas made to the police, Dr.
Rahman told Mishal Reja, “We will bomb your building,” and Giash
Ahmed, a real estate broker and former Republican candidate for state
senator, told Farhad Reja it would be burned.
Dr. Rahman and Mr. Ahmed said in interviews that they never threatened
anyone and were not even at the mall that day. Mr. Ahmed said Mrs.
Reja’s decision was her business.
Dr. Rahman said expressions of anger at Mrs. Reja should wait: “She
should have a time of healing.” He accused her of orchestrating the
scandal and fabricating the threat.
Meanwhile, under the neon signs and rainbow lights of Bangladesh
Plaza, shopkeepers worry that a boycott even by part of the community
will hurt their holiday business.
“Why should they involve people who are not involved? How will we
survive?” one of the shop owners said. Another said of the cremation:
“It’s a family matter. The parents, they decide.”