Suffolk Legislature approves Bellport Muslim cemetery plan, awaits town vote

Suffolk County lawmakers unanimously approved a plan for a Muslim cemetery on Beaver Dam Road in Bellport, clearing a major county hurdle for a project that could become Long Island’s first exclusively Muslim burial ground. The proposal calls for up to 12,000 plots at 58 Beaver Dam Rd., but it still needs approval from the Brookhaven Town Planning Board before it can move forward.

For Muslim families across Suffolk County and the wider region, the Bellport site addresses a burial shortage that leaders have been trying to solve for years. A 2022 report said Muslim leaders had spent a decade searching for burial land as plots were running out at Washington Memorial Park Cemetery in Mount Sinai, the main cemetery serving the Long Island, Brooklyn and Queens Muslim population. Newsday identified Nayyar Imam, a leader at the Islamic Association of Long Island mosque in Selden, as one of the people who helped drive that search.

Washington Memorial Park says it has served families from Long Island and the New York metropolitan area for more than half a century, including Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Suffolk and Nassau counties. The cemetery already includes a Muslim Garden, but a 2024 News 12 investigation found that the Jalalabad Association of America owns dozens of plots there, underscoring how heavily the region’s Muslim burial needs have depended on a limited number of existing spaces.

That dependence has also raised practical concerns about recordkeeping and access. News 12 reported that burial societies are allowed to sell plots only to members, and it highlighted a grave mix-up that exposed weak protections in burial-plot records. Those issues have made the push for a dedicated cemetery in Bellport especially significant for families looking for a permanent, community-specific burial ground on Long Island.

The unanimous vote by the Suffolk County Legislature signals broad political support for the project at the county level, even as the proposal enters its next and final local review in Brookhaven Town. For neighbors near Beaver Dam Road and for Muslim families across Suffolk, Queens and Brooklyn, the Planning Board’s decision will determine how the site fits into the surrounding area and whether the long-sought cemetery can finally take shape.