People rarely move to Oswaldtwistle, locals say. The 11,000 residents of the town outside Blackburn are mostly descendants of miners and textile workers, with some saying the last significant conflict was the 19th-century power-loom riots. But a dispute over a cemetery is now causing division. The Blackburn billionaires Mohsin and Zuber Issa – the new owners of Asda – have proposed building a cemetery with up to 35,000 burial plots alongside a Muslim funeral parlour and prayer rooms to allow traditional Muslim burial rites on the site. The cemetery would “meet the needs of all communities that wish to be buried at the site and will accommodate people from all faiths and backgrounds”, according to the Issa Foundation. Currently, Muslims in the area have to wash and shroud the body at a mosque before transporting it to a cemetery. The foundation said vacant Muslim burial plots in the UK were running out, especially after the coronavirus pandemic disproportionately affected Muslim communities. “Covid has put so much strain on our burial grounds that we are quite literally running out of space,” said Sabir Esa, a businessman from Lancashire. “In Blackburn we are now burying our dead on scrap pieces of land. It is a terrible situation.” But about 200 people attended a rally against the plan and more than 3,500 have signed a petition opposing the development. Some have cited water drainage as a problem. “I think everyone in the area is opposed to [the cemetery],” said Marlene Haworth, the leader of the Conservative group in Hyndburn council. Haworth said the field bought by the Issa Foundation was part of a green belt valued by local people for its natural beauty and wildlife. She added that the area was inappropriate for Muslim burial as “Oswaldtwistle has a very small Asian community”. The proposed site is a half an hour walk from a mosque in the town of Accrington, which merges with Oswaldtwistle to the east. More than 10% of people living within Hyndburn local authority are Muslim, double the national average, while in Accrington the Muslim population rises to 20%. There have been unsuccessful attempts to build a Muslim cemetery in Lancashire for the past nine years. Esa tried in 2012 and again in 2015 to build a cemetery in the Ribble Valley but faced similar opposition from residents. “The arguments they used were: ‘First they put a cemetery, then they’ll put a mosque,’” Esa said. “I have nothing against a mosque, but I don’t want a mosque in Oswaldtwistle,” said Paul Edmundson, 51, an electrician. He explained he was worried the project would expand to include places of worship – a concern repeated by other residents. Edmundson also values the green belt where the cemetery would be built and often walks his dog there. He is concerned about increased traffic on one of the most dangerous roads in the area. “I think there’s more appropriate places for it to be … not in a village like this,” he said. Many Muslim residents were reluctant to speak, citing fears of a backlash. But a Hyndburn Labour councillor, Noordad Aziz, spoke in favour of the cemetery. He reported one person to the police after he was intimidated during a public consultation. He said that afterwards comments about him were made on a Facebook group dedicated to opposing the cemetery. “I have been accused of being a ‘spy’ as well as being part of a ‘racial alliance’ and the group was full of Islamophobic and derogatory tropes,” he said. Aziz stressed the remarks were not representative of Oswaldtwistle residents. The main challenge is misinformation, he said, recalling instances of residents concerned that the grounds would be used for weddings or to build a mosque. “A burial site cannot be used as a mosque,” he said, “But when you explain that to people, they go: ‘Oh, well, I wasn’t aware of that.’ I think fundamentally, there needs to be better communication.”