Muslim cemetery embraces digital age

The Mowbray Muslim Cemetery is using a website to make it easier for people to locate the graves of relatives.

Mowbray Muslim Cemetary Board and Muslim Cemetery Association (MCA) representatives held a workshop with more than 20 undertakers, on Saturday, to show them how it works.

The workshop was part of the Mowbray Muslim Cemetery community clean-up, at the weekend, when members of the public visited the cemetery to help with its maintenance.

Ayub Mohamed, a member of both the cemetery board and the MCA, says he, along with fellow MCA members Shafiq Daniels, Thabiet Davids and Yusuf Albertyn, jointly developed muslimcemeteries.org in 2022. The website was piloted at the cemetery in 2023 and last year.

Relatives of the deceased could now book graves online without having to visit the cemetery, said Mr Mohamed.

Graves had geo-trackers so relatives could locate them with a smartphone or laptop.

“There were 900 burials last year and more than 50 percent of the graves have been geo-tagged through help of the undertakers using this application,” he said.

Mr Mohamed said he hoped other Muslim cemeteries in the city would use the system.

With the help of surveyors, some 10 000 of the Mowbray Muslim Cemetery’s 18 000 graves had now had their details stored digitally.

The leader of the project, Shafiq Daniels, said the geo-tagging would be particularly useful for family visiting from overseas or those who had not visited a grave in a while.

Visit muslimcemeteries.org for more information.