Muslim scholars question bin Laden's sea burial

Shortly after U.S. President Barack Obama announced an American commando unit had killed Osama bin Laden late Sunday night, questions arose about how the al-Qaeda leader's body was handled.

Some Muslim scholars argued that burying bin Laden at sea was disrespectful and that he should have been buried on land with his head facing toward Mecca.

According to U.S. officials, the body of the slain al-Qaeda leader was transported to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.

There, the body was handled respectfully in accordance with Islamic tradition, which stipulates that a corpse is to be washed, covered in a white sheet and buried within 24 hours of a death, officials said. The U.S. said it chose a sea burial because Islam forbids cremation, which is said to disrupt the rebirth of the body.

A U.S official said bin Laden was buried in the North Arabian Sea because it was difficult to find a country to accept his remains. When pressed by reporters about which countries had been contacted, the official said, "I'm not going into details of those conversations."

Reports suggested that Saudi Arabia, bin Laden’s birthplace, declined to take his body for burial.

In situations like this, governments try to avoid a land burial, because the site has the potential to attract extremist followers and become a shrine.

Mohammed Qudah, a professor of Islamic law at the University of Jordan, told The Associated Press that burying bin Laden at sea was not forbidden if there was nobody to receive the body and provide a Muslim burial.

But he went on: "It's neither true nor correct to claim that there was nobody in the Muslim world ready to receive Bin Laden's body."

The AP also quoted Dubai's grand mufti, Mohammed al-Qubaisi, saying that sea burials were permissible only in extraordinary circumstances, adding: "This is not one of them."

"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."