Today, Friday, the Washington Post editorial dealt with what it described as the “saga” that brought a county in a suburb of Virginia, south of the American capital, to a quiet end to a 5-year period in which the smell of Islamophobia, hatred and fear of Muslims grew over time.

The newspaper commented that the events surrounding a proposed Muslim cemetery in Stanford County, which unfolded under local law and were allowed by county officials to fester year after year, were more than a miscalculation that they became a shining example for local governments how not to deal with minority communities.

The newspaper pointed out that Stanford is a diverse place of more than 150,000 people, and that the Islamic cemetery in question would not be the first in the province.

In fact, the nonprofit All Muslim Association of America (AMAA) had been running a small cemetery there for nearly 20 years when it bought a new plot of land in 2016 with the goal of creating a larger burial ground for Muslim dead right now.

She added that what followed was an embarrassment to Stanford and an epic drama for the Muslim community.

Although the county ended up capitulating, with authorities halting attempts to block the proposed cemetery last year and recently agreeing to a $500,000 settlement without pleading guilty, it does not ease this long sparring that has been a waste of taxpayer time and money.

The newspaper criticized the details of a new scheme to use the county's land as illogical, and that its only apparent goal was to obstruct the new cemetery at the instigation of the landowners - one of whom is a member of the county planning committee - whose property abuts the proposed 45-acre cemetery.

She stated that construction is expected to begin soon on the new cemetery under the auspices of the All-Muslim League of America, which provides low-cost burials and funerals for needy Muslims throughout the region.

Yet she saw that although it ended well, the story also showed that bigotry was not buried properly.