Yes. Most major Canadian cities have Muslim sections or dedicated cemeteries, usually administered through mosques or community associations.
The Canadian position
Municipal and provincial cemetery rules vary; some require a container even where the practice prefers none.
Plots are often purchased in advance through the community.
The Islamic position
Prompt burial facing the qiblah is the established practice across the four schools.
Prearranging a plot removes one decision from the first day.
Where the four schools differ
This question turns on one issue in our madhhab register: Must a Muslim be buried in a Muslim cemetery? — whether a Muslim must be buried in a Muslim cemetery, whether a body may be taken to another city or country, and whether a grave may be reopened
Researched positions from our madhhab register — issue burial-place-cemetery, reviewed 2026-09-01.
The cemetery itself. The encyclopaedia’s Dafn entry §16 is the operative classical text and it is short: “The jurists agreed that it is forbidden to bury a Muslim in the cemetery of the disbelievers, and the reverse, except for necessity.” The rule the other way is stricter: a lapsed non-Muslim cemetery may be turned into a Muslim one once the bones are moved, but a lapsed Muslim cemetery may not be turned into a cemetery for non-Muslims, and Muslims’ bones may not be moved elsewhere, out of respect for them. The default remains the cemetery: “the graveyard is the best place for burial”, and the best graveyard in the town is better still. Applied here, by named bodies. AMJA, asked by a community that already had an Islamic cemetery and was using a Christian one anyway, said that “burying him in a cemetery of non-Muslims is explicitly prohibited” (fatwa 23003) — but its fatwa 1607 states the exception in terms: “In case of necessity, such as the complete lack of Muslim graveyards in a certain town and the close by towns, it would be allowable for a Muslim to get buried in a non-Muslim graveyard.” On the arrangement most Canadian communities actually have — a Muslim section of a municipal cemetery — AMJA’s fatwa 23153 holds a shared graveyard permissible “as long as the plots of Muslims are completely separated and explicitly recognizable”, adding that a physical fence is not itself the point. Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta, answering the same fact pattern, sets out an order of preference: a Muslim cemetery if one exists; failing that, burial in his home country unless transport “poses intolerable hardship and harm to his family or damage to his body”; failing that, a separate grave in a non-Muslim cemetery; and only as a last resort a non-Muslim grave, on the maxim that “necessity renders prohibited things permissible” — because burying him at all takes precedence over leaving him unburied. Directing it in a will. Islamweb was asked by a woman in a non-Muslim country whether she could make a will to be buried there, in a mixed cemetery with a section set apart for Muslims. The answer: there is no harm in it, “because this is a Muslim cemetery, and it does no harm that it lies beside the graves of others” — with the reminder that finding or founding separate Muslim burial ground remains a communal obligation. Moving a body abroad. The Office of the Mufti of the Federal Territories of Malaysia surveys the classical disagreement — Ibn al-Mundhir recording burial in the town of death as the sunna, Ibn Hajar recording the jurists divided between disliking and recommending transfer, al-Mazari giving the apparent Maliki position as permitting it — and concludes that burying a body somewhere other than the place of death is lawful “as long as there is a strong reason, a greater benefit, and it does not take so long that it harms the body”. Exhumation. Dar al-Ifta, asked whether scattered village graves could be consolidated for town development and public health, restates the classical baseline — the jurists agreed that opening a grave before decay to move the body is forbidden without necessity and permitted with it, while disagreeing over what counts as a necessity — and allows it for a genuine public interest, on condition the bodies are treated with respect and their inviolability not violated. And where a Muslim has already been buried in a non-Muslim cemetery, Islamweb holds that if transfer to a Muslim one is possible “that becomes obligatory, provided no deterioration is feared” — which is the Maliki rule in the classical books, reached in the same words. What is not covered. We found no classical treatment of a designated Muslim section of a municipal cemetery, and no classical or contemporary ruling directly on an exhumation ordered by a public authority or forced by expropriation; the nearest is Dar al-Ifta’s public-interest fatwa, which is about a consolidation the community itself wanted.
Full positions, evidence and history: Must a Muslim be buried in a Muslim cemetery? — the issue page.
Related madhhab issue: How soon must a Muslim be buried?.
This is legal information only. For advice on your own circumstances, speak to a lawyer.
Citations & sources
Every factual claim on this page traces to a source below. Details change — check the original source before relying on any figure, fee or legal position.
- What to do when someone dies — Government of Ontario