Muslim scholars on May 2 said Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea was a violation of Islamic tradition that may further provoke militant calls for revenge attacks against American targets. Although there appears to be some room for debate over the burial – as with many issues within the faith – a wide range of senior Islamic scholars interpreted it as a humiliating disregard for the standard Muslim practice of placing the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the holy city of Makkah. Sea burials can be allowed, they said, but only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship.
Bin Laden’s burial at sea “runs contrary to the principles of Islamic laws, religious values and humanitarian customs,” said Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand Imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque.
Omar Bakri Mohammed of Lebanon, said, “The Americans want to humiliate Muslims through this burial, and I don’t think this is in the interest of the U.S. administration.”
The Lebanese scholar Mohammed called it a “strategic mistake” that was bound to stoke rage.
“They can say they buried him at sea, but they cannot say they did it according to Islam,” Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai’s grand mufti, said about bin Laden’s burial. “If the family does not want him, it’s really simple in Islam: You dig up a grave anywhere, even on a remote island, you say the prayers and that’s it.”
Muslim scholars in Iraq also criticised the U.S. action. “If a man dies on a ship that is a long distance from land, then the dead man should be buried at the sea,” said Shiite cleric Ibrahim al-Jabari. “But if he dies on land, then he should be buried in the ground, not to be thrown into the sea. Otherwise, this would be only inviting fish to a banquet.”
“What was done by the Americans is forbidden by Islam and might provoke some Muslims,” said another Islamic scholar from Iraq, Abdul-Sattar al-Janabi, who preaches at Baghdad’s famous Abu Hanifa mosque. “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 or land to bury him.”
Prominent Egyptian Islamic 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, but he is already a symbol in people’s hearts.”