The Muslim Undertakers Of East London

Elderly Bangladeshi men in white skullcaps carry flimsy bags full of vegetables, while young women in black abayas push prams past empty bookmakers, busy fried chicken restaurants and market stalls hung with colorful scarves in the London drizzle.

This is Whitechapel in the heart of London’s East End. Migrants have made their home here, their mark etched onto the fabric of its streets for centuries – the buildings that line them, the signs that name them and the people who walk them.

There is a cramped, unassuming office nestled beside the distinctive red and brown brick East London Mosque and it is home to the UK’s largest Muslim community at the heart. It opens seven days a week, 365 days of the year and it is a constant source of support. Residents rarely step foot inside it, but they know it is there

Europe’s first Muslim undertakers, Haji Taslim’s Funerals, easing the Muslim dead into the eternal afterlife with dignity and devotion, who’s Funerals often facilitates this return.

“It is he, (Allah) Who gives life, and causes death,” says the Koran, “and to Him you (all) shall return.”

The place erupts in greetings when relatives of the deceased brandishing green death registration papers are buzzed inside the office.

Arrangements to cemetery grounds are made along with the discussion of prices and procedures. The paperwork is arranged in this narrow, busy space filled with raspberry-tinted waiting room chairs when a Muslim death occurs.

However, the bodies wait in the basement. They rest on metal tables in sanitized rooms on the ground floor of the East London Mosque, right next door to the front office. In the sanitized room there is clinical lighting and bodies are separated by gender.

By two men, white cloth is ripped with precision. The cloth melts and divides so easily in their hands, it’s like they’re pulling apart a piece of Kleenex. The bodies are washed; a procedure in which families are invited to participate. Bodies are covered in shroud (men require three shrouds and women five); prayed over; and then lowered, six feet underground, without a coffin, where they will eternally face toward Mecca, the holiest site in the Muslim faith and the direction faced during prayer.

“Across Europe, the far right is on the rise and it has some of the continent’s most diverse communities in its cross-hairs. To the far right, these neighborhoods are ‘no-go zones’ that challenge their notion of what it means to be European.”