Osama bin Laden did not deserve an Islamic burial
Following the decision of the US authorities to consign the corpse of Osama bin Laden to the waters of the Arabian Gulf, some folk with a conspiratorial cast of mind have questioned the disposition of the body, asking if some kind of "cover-up" was intended. I consider such ruminations trivial. More interesting questions emerge from reports that the sea burial was accompanied by standard Islamic funeral rites: washing of the body, wrapping it in a shroud, and "prepared religious remarks which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker".
The widely cited rationales for this disposition of the body have been that Saudi Arabia, and presumably the Bin Laden family, refused to receive the body, and that sea burial would avoid a grave on land becoming a "shrine" for "pilgrimages" by his radical admirers.… Seguir leyendo »