Sea burial of Osama bin Laden breaks sharia law, say
Muslim scholars
US decision to dispose of body in the
sea prevents grave site becoming a shrine but clerics warn it may lead to
reprisals
Ian Black and
Brian Whitaker
guardian.co.uk,
Monday 2 May 2011 19.36 BST
Osama bin
Laden's burial reportedly took
place from the deck of the USS aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, above.
Photograph: Timothy A. Hazel/AFP/Getty Images
Osama bin Laden's
burial at sea was quickly criticised by Muslim scholars who claimed it
had breached sharia law and warned that it may provoke calls for revenge
attacks against US targets.
Others used the sea burial question
to question whether he was dead at all, with doubts fuelled by the
absence of authentic photographs of his corpse.
US officials said
tests using DNA from several of Bin Laden's family members had provided
"virtual certainty" that it was his body. A woman believed to be one of
Bin Laden's wives identified the al-Qaida
leader, and he was visually identified by members of the US raiding
party, the Pentagon said. Burying him on land could have led to his
grave becoming a focus of contention and pilgrimage as well as posing
tough questions about where he should be laid to rest.
"Finding a
country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted
terrorist would have been difficult," a US official said. "So the US
decided to bury him at sea." The burial reportedly took place from the
deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the North Arabian sea.
Senior
US officials told news agencies that his body was disposed of in
accordance with Islamic tradition, which involves ritual washing,
shrouding and burial within 24 hours.
The 24-hour rule has not
always been applied in the past. For example, the bodies of Uday and
Qusay Hussein – sons of the Iraqi dictator Saddam – were embalmed and
held for 11 days after they were killed by US forces. Their bodies were
later shown to media, provoking some angry responses.
It remains
unclear if the US will release photos of Bin Laden's remains, but
dispelling any doubts that he is dead is likely to be a major impetus –
particularly in an age when conspiracy theories can be powerfully
manipulated on the web.
In a hint that such a release may be on
the cards, John Brennan, Barack Obama's counter-terrorism adviser said:
"We are going to do everything we can to make sure that nobody has any
basis to try to deny that we got Osama bin Laden." He added that the US
will "share what we can because we want to make sure that not only the
American people but the world understand exactly what happened."
Brad
Sagarin, a psychologist at Northern Illinois University who studies
persuasion, said the rapid disposal of the body "would certainly be a
rich sort of kernel for somebody to grasp on to if they were motivated
to disbelieve this."
Citing the example of those who refuse to
believe that Barack Obama is a US citizen, he added: "As with the
birther conspiracy, there's going to be a set of people who are never
going to be convinced. People filter the information they receive
through their current attitudes, their current perspectives."
Already,
doubt is spreading in Pakistan. Many people do not want to believe that
Bin Laden is really dead, even though an al-Qaida spokesman, in vowing
vengeance against America, called him a martyr, offering no challenge to
the US account of his death.
In the immediate aftermath, people
in Abbottabad expressed widespread disbelief that Bin Laden had died or
ever lived among them.
"I'm not ready to buy Bin Laden was here,"
said Haris Rasheed, 22, who works in a fast food restaurant. "How come
no one knew he was here and why did they bury him so quickly? This is
all fake, a drama, and a crude one."
Kamal Khan, 25, who is unemployed, said the official story "looks fishy".
In
terms of the basic requirements for Muslim burials, standard practice
involves placing the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the
holy city of Mecca.
Burial at sea is rare in Islam,
though Muslim websites say it is permitted in certain circumstances.
One is during a long voyage where the body may decompose and pose a
health hazard to a ship's passengers, an exception noted on Monday by
Tunisian scholar Ahmed al-Gharbi. Another is if there is a risk of
enemies digging up a and grave and exhuming or mutilating the body.
Dr
Saud al-Fanisan, former dean of the faculty of sharia law in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, said that if a body was buried at sea it should be
protected from fish. In the words of alislam.org, the body should be
lowered into the water "in a vessel of clay or with a weight tied to its
feet".
Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai's grand mufti, said of Bin
Laden's burial: "They can say they buried him at sea, but they cannot
say they did it according to Islam. Sea burials are permissible for
Muslims in extraordinary circumstances. This is not one of them."
Abdul-Sattar
al-Janabi, who preaches at Baghdad's Abu Hanifa mosque, said: "What was
done by the Americans is forbidden by Islam and might provoke some
Muslims.
"It is not acceptable and it is almost a crime to throw
the body of a Muslim man into the sea. The body of Bin Laden should have
been handed over to his family to look for a country to bury him."
The
radical Lebanon-based cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed said: "The Americans
want to humiliate Muslims through this burial, and I don't think this is
in the interest of the US administration."
The Egyptian analyst
and lawyer Montasser el-Zayat said Bin Laden's sea burial was designed
to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine. But an option was an
unmarked grave. "They don't want to see him become a symbol," he said.
"But he is already a symbol in people's hearts."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/02/sea-burial-osama-bin-laden
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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