Developers seek to transform closed East Moriches airport into Muslim cemetery

With the number of Muslim burial plots on Long Island scarce, developers are looking to open an Islamic cemetery at the site of a closed private airport in East Moriches.

The graveyard, identified in Brookhaven Town planning documents as Suffolk Muslim Cemetery, would occupy a 28.3-acre property on Montauk Highway that has been unused since the 2016 closing of Spadaro Airport. The airfield closed amid financial and legal problems, including allegations it had violated town noise ordinances.

The cemetery — which would be the first state-sanctioned Muslim cemetery on Long Island and the second in New York — would hold up to 25,024 burial plots, town documents show. The developers hope to open it as soon as June.

Brookhaven developer Ghulam Sarwar and Nayyar Imam, an adviser for the Islamic Association of Long Island mosque in Selden, said they spent nearly two decades seeking a suitable location for a cemetery as burial plots for Muslims became more scarce. 

Muslim population on rise

Leaders of Long Island's Muslim community say the number of local adherents to the religion is growing, with the number of mosques in Nassau and Suffolk counties rising from about two dozen a decade ago to more than 40, Newsday has reported. In a 2018 study, Washington, D.C., nonprofit Pew Research Center estimated the U.S. Muslim population would more than double by 2050, from 3.45 million to 8.1 million. 

Long Island's Muslim population has been estimated at 100,000, including members from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Tunisia and Turkey, as well as some African Americans and Anglo Americans, Newsday has reported. 

"We’re looking for a long time. It was very difficult,” Sarwar said. “People go to New Jersey and out of state [to bury their dead].”

Muslims require special procedures for burial, including having the person’s face looking toward the Islamic holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

Sarwar said the project would cost $10 million, including the land purchase cost, which he declined to specify.

The cemetery requires Brookhaven approvals for its site layout, and permits from the county and the state Department of State, which regulates cemeteries, Sarwar said.

He and Imam credited Suffolk County Executive  Edward P. Romaine, Brookhaven Supervisor Dan Panico and Town Councilwoman Karen Dunne Kesnig with helping them locate the property.

Town support, with conditions

Dunne Kesnig said town officials support the project, but preliminary plans lacked information about landscaping. A public hearing will be held later this year, she said.

“The town wants it to be in a more natural state,” she said. “It’s going to have to be changed.”

Jim Gleason, a member of the East Moriches Property Owners Association civic group, said he and other residents who have viewed the plans also are concerned about landscaping. 

“It definitely was less than what one might have anticipated and certainly less than other cemeteries in the vicinity,” Gleason said, adding while he understands Muslims need a place to bury loved ones, “It’s very hard to see what the benefit of the cemetery would be to the community.”

Sarwar said he would add landscaping to the plans.

"We want to make it beautiful,” he said.

When completed, the East Moriches site would join a graveyard in upstate Orange County as New York's only state-authorized cemeteries reserved for Muslims, New York Department of State spokesperson Mercedes Padilla said in an email. There also are an unspecified number of Muslim cemeteries owned and operated by religious corporations that do not require state authorization, she said.

Imam said the cemetery would be run by a nonprofit organization. He estimated 25,000 plots would be sufficient for 10 to 15 years.

He said Washington Memorial Park Cemetery in Mount Sinai is rapidly running out of plots in its Muslim section. The section had fewer than 200 plots in 2022, Newsday previously reported.

“People call us that somebody died in the family," he said. "We were happy that we could find this place.”

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.