ORLAND PARK, Ill. Kifah Mustapha, the imam at Orland Park Prayer Center, wasnt surprised when a petition protesting the idea of a Muslim cemetery in the area began circulating.

Mustapha and leaders from other mosques in the suburbs of Chicago had anticipated resistance. They had seen the xenophobic and racist reactions that other mosques had gotten when trying to build cemeteries where Muslims could be buried according to Islamic tradition.

When the backlash came for his mosque, Mustapha was ready. He had quietly applied for all the permits and licenses needed to purchase and develop the land, had successfully fundraised the amount needed to develop the cemetery and had hired a top law firm that could step in if needed.

Critics in the community did what they could to stop the cemetery from being built, claiming it would bring unnecessary traffic to the area, decrease property values and affect the areas drinking water.

Those reactions were not unlike the anti-mosque uproar of the early 2000s, when Muslim Americans faced vehement opposition to building new places of worship. Non-Muslim residents used zoning ordinances as a pretext to mask Islamophobic opposition to the growing Muslim population in their communities.

And Muslim Americans have increasingly faced resistance while burying their loved ones. Proposed Muslim cemeteries across the country have been subject to protests, online petitions and town-hall meetings jammed with angry residents. HuffPost has documented more than two dozen incidents where people protested the construction of a Muslim cemetery in states across the country. Some states, like Illinois, saw multiple incidents. Other Muslim communities had their cemeteries vandalized or broken into.

Every community had its own struggle, from the Irish to the Jewish community, to the Black and Latino community, so Muslims are no exception, Mustapha said. But this goes against what this country is all about. We have the Constitution and laws that protect the rights of a citizen as an individual or as a community.