Cremating the Rights of the Dead

Introduction

Imagine living with a loved one your whole life; walking hand-in-hand in helping shoulder the burdens of hardship and adversity faced while sharing in the moments of temporal joy and happiness.

Imagine further, how you would feel if the one you love suddenly passes away and YOU are confronted with the horrifying prospect of personally setting to fire his/ her funeral pyre and having to experience the smell of burning human flesh as your loved one’s body spits, crackles and burns. Worse still, imagine then, after going through this horrendous ordeal, not being expected to grieve!

All praise is due to Allah (alhamdulillaah) for guiding us to a religion of mercy (deenur-rahmah) that has laid down a complete guidance that has established the rights for all relevant aspects of life in order to maintain harmony and balance:

Part of this balance is to recognise that the teachings and laws of Islam came to honour people, as Allah says:

Part of this honour is to know the rights established by our Creator. From these rights include the rights of the mother over her children and vice-versa; the rights of the wife over the husband and vice-versa; the rights of the leader over his subjects and vice-versa; the rights animals have over us; the rights of the enemy; the rights of the neighbours; the rights of the foetus; and even the rights of the walkway. Over all this, however, is the most important right of all: the rights of God Almighty.

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) was the one who conveyed and taught us these rights, which also include those prescribed to the dead.

Let us see how the Islamic rights of the dead fare in comparison to Sikhism’s funeral/ crematory procedure known as Saskar and the rights it affords its dead.

Ashes to Ashes – The Saskar Ceremony

It is important to note from the outset that just as the living have rights in Islam, the dead too have rights. The living have the right to being treated respectfully. A human’s honour is sacred and inviolable. Similarly, the deceased too has rights part of which is to treat the dead body with respect and not dishonour it.

Islam has ordered that one treat the deceased with utmost respect just as s/he was treated in life. Allah has prescribed that when a Muslim dies, that person be washed and cleansed, shrouded in a cloth (preferably white), a funeral prayer offered seeking Allah’s mercy and forgiveness, followed by said person being buried in the ground and covered with earth. Hence, it is forbidden in Islam to burn or cremate the dead; such an act is considered sacrilegious.

Given that it is also forbidden for Muslims to step, walk or sit on graves, how much more abhorrent must it be to burn the body that rests therein?

The funeral practice of burying the dead was the original mode of disposing of a dead body prescribed by Allah to the progenitor of humankind: Prophet Adam, and all subsequent Prophets thereafter up to and including the last Prophet, Muhammad (peace be upon them all).

Sikhs, on the other hand, believe that once a person has died, the body becomes an extraneous shell. Hence, the question of disposing of the dead body correctly is immaterial and can be disposed of through burning with fire.

It is an interesting answer and indicative of the Sikhi mentality. Sikhs, however, it should be noted, do not believe that cremation is the only way to go:

Cremation, however, takes precedence over all other modes of “disposal” as set out in the following Rehat Maryada (Article XIX) on funeral ceremonies:

We should, nonetheless, acknowledge and pay tribute to the respectful manner in which Sikhs, similar to the Muslims, take care of the pre-cremated body:

But, the question we pose is: if the body is going to be so disrespectfully discarded anyway, why bother with such pretentious superficialities?

Although Sikhs are guilty of adopting and carrying on this Hindu man-invented mode of disposal, albeit with their own separate and unique ceremonial rituals, they should be commended for not carrying on the superstitious beliefs of the Hindus:

However, an action that has been stipulated in Sikhism, though not found in the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, is similar to the following practice of the Hindus:

How irresponsible is this practice that pays no mind to the blatant pollution of water? One can only shudder at the thought of how much a water source will be polluted when considering the number of deaths that occur in the Sikh and Hindu community. Unfortunately, they seem to give more importance to superstitious practices than harmful actions!

However, an important observation we have noted is the proven reality that burying the dead is more environmentally friendly than cremation. This further confirms the dictum that Allaah has “forbidden for us only what is injurious or harmful for us (or for our environment)”.

Some Sikhs have contended that cremation does not take up much space as opposed to huge cemeteries. But, we would contend that this is relative. The earth is more than spacious enough to accommodate the dead, and burial is without doubt more environmentally friendly.

In Islam, the Qur’an reminds the true believer of how one’s outlook should be towards the environment. Allah says:

Part of this humility is to uphold the rights the earth has over us by making sure we do not cause pollution unnecessarily.

Conclusion

In light of the above, we are brought back full circle and confronted by the question: can burning the body of the deceased really be described as a “respectful way”? 

As part of its social concept of respect, Islam holds that the body of the deceased must not be cremated, but rather buried with respect. However, there is also an emotional concept attached to the action of burying the dead, which is to serve as a reminder to the conscientious Muslim that one day very soon we too shall follow our dead and shortly return to the earth from whence we came. Hence, the impermissibility of cremation revolves around both a social and emotional concept.

It is, therefore, completely untrue for Sikhs to claim that the reason Muslims bury their dead is because of their belief in the Day of Resurrection. The wisdom behind the burial procedure in actual fact has very little to do with the Final Day and much more to do with respect and practicality.

The Pakistani scholar, Maulana Mahmood Ahmed Mirpuri, ruled:

Moreover, there is no reminder more important than remembering someone very close to you who was once with you in sharing in the joys of life, but has now left you for the next abode. Indeed, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said:

Since cremations were a common theme in India, the 10 Gurus did not find it objectionable. On the contrary, they continued the tradition of the Hindus as per their Sikh worldview.

In an article, a leading Sikh organisation expressed its anger after a non-Sikh society had asked, on behalf of both the Hindus and Sikhs, the right to hold the first open-air cremation in the UK for over 70 years. [10] This is not only ironic, but also indicative of Sikhism’s short-sightedness when one witnesses Sikhs angered by such an insignificant issue as open-air cremations when compared to the horrible ceremony of torching the body of their loved ones and watching these corpses burn, crackle and spit.

[1] Why do Sikhs cremate their dead and not bury them?, (Why I chose Sikhism… and I didn’t choose Islam; accessed: June 18, 2008).

This question: “How will the body, now decayed and turned to soil ever, rise again?” was also posed by the predecessors of the Sikhs, the polytheistic pagan Arabs, who also rejected the Day of Resurrection. Allah answers this question emphatically:

[2] http://www.sikhism101.com/?p=values&ans=8
[3] http://www.sikhmarg.com/english/chapter02.html
[4] http://www.sikhs.org/reht4.htm
[5] Ibid.
[6] Islam too rejects this superstitious notion. Ibn ‘Abbas narrated:

The Prophet was buried at night. Imam Ahmad narrated that ‘A’ishah said: “We did not know that the Messenger of Allah had been buried until we heard the sound of the shovels at the end of the night.” Abu Bakr, ‘Uthmaan, ‘A’ishah and Ibn Mas’ud were all buried at night.
[7] Prophet Muhammad firmly warned against the exaggerated forms of wailing over the dead, which had become a customary norm amongst the pre-Islamic Arabs, especially the women, to the extent that he said:

Abu Burdah reported:

Al-Mughirah bin Shu’bah said:

So reprehensible was this deed that the women who came to give their pledge of allegiance to the Prophet would take this as a specific clause. Umm ‘Atiyyah said:

While Abu Hurairah said: