Wait, I thought he wasn’t a “Muslim leader”?
(Daily Mail) — Radical Muslims are already calling the site of Osama bin Laden’s ocean burial the ‘Martyr’s Sea’, according to one of Britain’s leading Islamic scholars.
The US said the decision to drop bin Laden’s body into the North Arabian Sea was taken to avoid creating a shrine for the slain Al Qaeda chief.
But Abdal Hakim Murad, Muslim Chaplain at Cambridge University, claimed yesterday that the move could backfire on the Americans.
Speaking on Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme, he said it was ‘disappointing’ that bin Laden wasn’t taken into custody.
‘By tipping him into the sea, the Americans may have created a kind of shrine. Some radicals are already calling the Arabian Sea the Martyr’s Sea,’ he said.
‘Given Muslim ideas of holiness diffusing over large areas it is possible that a pilgrimage will develop as radicals stand on beaches contemplating the virtues of their dead hero,’ he added.
‘Muslim scholars have been worried about the manner in which his mortal remains were consigned to the deep, he added, saying that Islam’s most respected scholars had already decreed the sea burial ‘religiously improper.’
‘Even mass murderers deserve a religiously valid burial. We are judged on how we behave when in a position of strength,’ he said.