M Train: Death & Grieving in Muslim New York
See Something Say Something
Ahmed Ali Akbar
4.8 • 550 Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2020
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Burying a loved one is never easy. But for Muslims New Yorkers, the price of land, gentrification, and ritual practices complicates an already difficult process. As a result, most Muslims in the 5 boroughs tend to be buried hours away from their homes, at cemeteries in Long Island or New Jersey. With the death rate in NYC soaring due to COVID-19, Muslim funeral homes have borne the burden of a crisis that developed long before quarantine. How does one grapple with saying goodbye to our loved ones when burial is less than ideal?
To answer these questions, we speak to housing policy expert Lena Afridi about losing and burying her father over a year ago. Then, Imam Khalid Latif of ICNYU shares some of the pressures that funeral homes in New York are facing during the COVID-19 crisis.
M Train releases bi-weekly and each episode focuses on New York City metro area and the stories of American Muslims that can be found on and off the subway.
Donate to ICNYU's Coronavirus Financial Hardship Grants: https://www.launchgood.com/project/coronavirus_emergency_response_financial_hardship_grants#!/
Read Lena's Article: "Death and Life in Great American Cities": https://thenewinquiry.com/death-and-life-in-great-american-cities/
Find ICNYU's Virtual Ramadan Programming here: https://icnyu.org/
Please consider signing up with the National Bone Marrow Registry, especially if you are from an underrepresented group. Sign up here: https://bethematch.org/
Follow Ahmed @radbrowndads.
Follow Imam Khalid Latif @KLatif
Follow Lena @lpafridi
Follow our producer Shirin @Shebe86.
Follow our editor Myra @MBasilRahim, and follow our Executive Producer Sachar Mathias @sacharmathias.
Follow SSSS on Twitter and Facebook @seesomething.
Follow BRIC on Twitter @BRICTV
Watch BRIC's videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/brictv
This miniseries was made with the generous help of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts Building Bridges Program. You can learn about their mission here: https://www.ddcf.org/what-we-fund/building-bridges/
This episode featured music composed by Myra Al-Rahim and from Freesound.
For more information on this and all BRIC Radio podcasts, visit www.bricartsmedia.org/radio.
SSSS is on Patreon. Find us at patreon.com/ahmedaliakbar. Thanks to our patrons for supporting the show.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ladies and gentlemen, this is an important message from the New York City Police Department. |
| 0:06.0 | If you see a suspicious package or activity on the platform or train, do not keep it to yourself. |
| 0:12.0 | Stand clear of the closing doors, please. |
| 0:15.0 | What about you? |
| 0:16.0 | Hey, Hey everyone, I'm Amadale Yuckber, and this is M-Train, a podcast miniseries from |
| 0:29.0 | See Something, Say Something, and Brick Radio. |
| 0:31.6 | This week, we're going to be talking about death in New York City and how gentrification |
| 0:35.4 | and COVID-19 have complicated burials in the city. |
| 0:39.0 | So for this episode, we're going to talk to Lena Afridi, who's going to help us understand |
| 0:43.0 | how complicated it is to bury a loved one. And then we called up Imam Khalid Latif to get |
| 0:48.0 | an update on how COVID-19 has complicated Muslim burial practices. Also, maybe I should say |
| 0:54.0 | Ramadan Mubarak. |
| 0:55.2 | This episode wasn't planned to be a Ramadan episode, |
| 0:57.4 | but because of delays due to COVID-19, it's releasing during the month. |
| 1:01.7 | But first, I want to introduce you to the M-Train production team. |
| 1:05.1 | We're going to share with you our own personal experiences with death in Muslim communities |
| 1:08.7 | and why we're interested in such a morbid topic. |
| 1:13.6 | Hi, my name is Shireen Barghe and I'm a senior producer at Brick TV and I'm the co-producer of M-Train. |
| 1:33.6 | Hi, everyone. My name is Mira al-Rahim and I edit the M-Train podcast as well as sound design and score. |
| 1:40.0 | So I convened you two here because when Shereen and I were first pitching the series, |
| 1:46.3 | one of our first ideas was to talk about death and dying in New York as a Muslim. |
| 1:52.8 | For some reason, Shereen and I both are kind of very obsessed with death. |
... |
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