Srinagar, May 3: Like most of the Islamic scholars across the world, the senior Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani Tuesday flayed Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea.
“This act has no moral or legal justification. Burying the enemy according to his/her religion and with due respect is an accepted norm in every civilized society. However, Osama’s burial at sea has revealed the extent of moral degradation to which a person or State can stoop under the intoxication of power,” Geelani said in a statement issued in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian administered Kashmir.
He said the ‘self-proclaimed champions of human rights and democracy’ have brought shame to the entire humanity through this act. “This contemptuous treatment of dead bodies is a reminder of Stone Age and US has put question marks over its civilization and moral traditions,” the ailing separatist leader said.
He said resistance against foreign occupation was a natural reaction and if any powerful nation like America, Israel, Britain or India occupied other nations and killed innocent civilians, the reaction would be no different. “As long as the foreign occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Kashmir continues, resistance would surface in different forms and manifestations, and until the foreign powers recall their forces back from these regions and adopt the policy of live and let live, we cannot realize the dream of making the world a peaceful place,” added Geelani.
It is pertinent to mention here that Islamic clerics have termed Osama’s burial at sea as a violation of Islamic tradition.
“Osama’s burial at sea runs contrary to the principles of Islamic laws, religious values and humanitarian customs,” Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand Imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque was quoted as having said by media reports.
The reports further quoted Omar Bakri Mohammed, a cleric in Lebanon as saying the Americans want to humiliate Muslims through this burial. “I don’t think this is in the interest of the US administration,” he said and called it a “strategic mistake” that was bound to stoke rage.
