SIDNEY CENTER, N.Y. | On a crisp November day in 2009, the cemetery on the hill received its first interment — a 28-year-old stonemason killed in a car accident two days earlier.
Solemnly, his Sufi Muslim brethren buried him beneath a vibrant green headstone — the color of the Osmanli Naksibendi Hakkani order, which runs a 50-acre farm and mosque here. They prayed for him to rest in peace. But that was not to be.
Instead of peace, the burial ignited a war — one that would erupt nine months later, hurling Sidney into the national spotlight, bitterly dividing some residents while transforming others who say things will never be the same.
It began quietly enough last summer, after a second burial in the cemetery. At the height of a national debate about a mosque near ground zero, the town Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to investigate the Sufi graves on Wheat Hill Road.
The Sufis followed proper procedures. But that didn’t deter town Supervisor Robert McCarthy from calling the graves illegal and suggesting the bodies might have to be disinterred.
“You can’t just bury Grandma in the backyard under the picnic table,” he said.
With that, Mr. McCarthy, a 70-year-old retired businessman, became a poster child for Muslim-bashing everywhere. Locals watched in horror as Sidney was branded as “Islamophobic,” backward and ignorant.
“I felt so ashamed of my town,” said jeweler Richard Cooley. And then those feelings changed.
In the days and weeks that followed, a spirited sense of mission seemed to surge through Sidney, 150 miles north of New York City. eople reached out, not only to Sufis, but to each other. They set up websites, bonded on Facebook, launched petitions to investigate town government.
Though the board hastily dropped the cemetery issue, people packed into the civic center for a chaotic meeting where they yelled at town leaders, demanding an apology. And they trekked to the Sufi center eight miles outside town, to sip tea with the sheik, to vow that Sidney, population 6,000, will be in the spotlight again, this time as a shining example of tolerance and understanding.
It’s 6 a.m. on a Saturday, and business is brisk at the Trackside diner, where political opinions are as strong as the coffee. These days, the main topic of conversation has been, as one man jokingly put it, “the turbans on top of the hill.”
The door opens, and two men in turbans walk in. Though he has only been to the diner once before, everyone recognizes Hans Hass, the chief spokesman for the Sufis and chief thorn in Mr. McCarthy’s side.
Lately Mr. Hass, 40, a roofing contractor and captain of the local ambulance squad, seems to be everywhere, talking with national media, writing letters to officials, filing freedom of information requests.
At the diner, Mr. Hass is greeted by Carrie Guarria, a 45-year-old college assistant administrator who had become increasingly disturbed about comments she overheard — that all Muslims are terrorists, that the Sufis have pictures of Osama bin Laden at their center, that the town would be better off if they left.
At her table is Bill Howes, an 81-year-old retired excavator, whose demeanor changes when the conversation turns to Mr. McCarthy. “Someone has to shake the town up,” he says.
“But he told reporters all over the country that what we did was illegal, and it wasn’t,” Mr. Hass protests.
Mr. Howes excuses himself and moves to another table.
The Sufis settled in Sidney Center in 2002, following Sheik Abdul Kerim al-Kibrisi, 54, who moved here after years of hosting services in New York City. Quietly, they worked their sprawling sheep and cattle farm, relatively unnoticed by the larger community.
They converted the enormous red barn into a mosque, a beautiful place that glows with colors and warmth, the sweet smell of incense blending with that of a smoky wood stove. Green and gold tapestries drape the walls, which are covered with pictures of sheiks and saints. Oriental rugs cover the floor.
Friday’s Jummah service, the most important of the week, lasts about 40 minutes, the men bowing and praying in front. The women pray in the back.
Afterward, everyone drinks sweet Turkish tea and listens as their sheik speaks of tolerance, the perils of ego — and the controversy consuming the town. A naturalized American who was born in Cyprus, the sheik is a genial man with a jeweled purple turban, long gray beard and deep, gravelly voice.
“What is happening right here in Sidney,” he says, “can show the whole world, that we can live peacefully as Muslims and non-Muslims … that a small town in America can show that the whole country is not mired in ‘Islamophobia.’”
Sufism is a mystical tradition in Islam; the order says its mission is to live a simple life of contemplation and prayer. But the Sufis know they are being watched.
They’ve heard their share of taunts: “Terrorists, go back to your own country.” They’ve had their share of police calls: A suspicious man in a turban spotted sitting by the dam. They hear the rumors — that they are storing weapons, that they are a cult, that they are planning something evil.
As Maryem Brawley, the sheik’s wife, told town officials, “No one called. No one wrote a letter. No one knocked on our door. You just assumed that we were doing something illegal. You made assumptions about us that were not true.”
“It had nothing to do with the fact they are Muslim, I was just trying to keep tax dollars down,” says Mr. McCarthy, who once ran a business making custom golf-putters.
Mr. McCarthy first ran for office last year, and he says he has no political agenda other than to cut taxes and spending. The cemetery affair, he says, was blown out of proportion by the media.
He says he ran for office on a platform of “transparency in government” and he insists that is what he is trying to do, though a recent budget workshop session, hastily posted the night before, was held at 7:30 a.m. Mr. Hass showed up, mocked him about lack of transparency and accused the board of holding an illegal secret meeting.
Mr. McCarthy doesn’t hide his disdain for Mr. Hass, whom he calls “a jerk fueling things for his own personal agenda.”
Skeptics say all this good will and tolerance — not to mention efforts to oust Mr. McCarthy — will fade, disappearing into memory as winter sets in. Others disagree, saying events have changed them profoundly.
“Change is happening,” says retired plant manager Joe Cardinal. “But it’s going to take time for the town to heal.”
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