But bin Laden, Obama said Sunday night, was “not a Muslim leader”! He was a “mass murderer of Muslims”! So why should Muslim “sensitivities” be in play in this at all? And even if Osama had not been a Muslim leader, would the White House hold back on anything else because of the “sensitivities” of some group or other? If Osama bin Laden had been “not a Methodist leader,” but a “mass murderer of Methodists,” would the White House hold back on releasing his death photo out of deference to Methodist “sensitivities”?
“White House to delay the release of ‘gruesome’ bin Laden death photos due to Muslim ‘sensitivities,'” by Oliver Tree in the Daily Mail, May 3:
The White House was under mounting pressure today to release ‘gruesome’ photographs of Osama Bin Laden’s corpse – to end claims he could still be alive.
White House officials are afraid that releasing the images, thought to show the dead al-Qaeda leader with a massive head wound, would offend ‘sensitivities’ in the Muslim world.
It had been previously thought President Barack Obama had decided to release at least one photo showing Osama Bin Laden shortly after he was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs.
The news came as a Taliban spokesman demanded to see photographic evidence of the assassination.
The White House says the photograph of a dead Osama bin Laden is ‘gruesome’ and that ‘it could be inflammatory’ if released.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said the White House is mulling whether to make the photo public, but he said officials are concerned about the ‘sensitivity’ of doing so….
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement emailed to journalists: ‘This news is only coming from one side, from Obama’s office, and America has not shown any evidence or proof to support this claim.
‘On the other side, our sources close to Osama bin Laden have not confirmed or denied the news.
‘Until there is news from sources close to Osama bin Laden it will be too early to provide any reaction.’
Officials are also considering whether to release a video showing Osama Bin Laden being buried at sea….
John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism chief, told reporters that the administration was still deliberating on release of the material. Making it public might satisfy those who would otherwise doubt that it was bin Laden who was killed….
‘The burial of bin Laden’s remains was done in strict conformance with Islamist precepts and practices,’ said John Brennan, U.S. President Barack Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser….
Muslim clerics are predicting revenge attacks against American targets because of the way the government decided to dispose of the leader’s body.
9/11 didn’t bother them. The sea burial of Osama bin Laden does.
A wide range of 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 Mecca.
Sea burials can be allowed, they said, but only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship far from the coast.
A U.S. official said the burial decision was made after concluding that it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. government asked Saudi Arabia – where bin Laden was born – to take his remains, but the government declined.
The U.S. is also thought to have been anxious to avoid burying the corpse on land over fears the grave would become a rallying point for militants, even if left unmarked….
But Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical cleric in Lebanon, said it should not have been done in this way: ‘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 haste has also been questioned, as the U.S. has not always observed the 24-hour rule for Muslim burials. In 2003 the bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay were embalmed and held for 11 days before they were released for burial.
Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai’s grand mufti, said about bin Laden’s burial, said: ‘They can say they buried him at sea, but they cannot say they did it according to Islam. 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.
‘Sea burials are permissible for Muslims in extraordinary circumstances. This is not one of them.’
Other scholars said that even those who are criminals and murderers are given the Islamic rite of burial.
Dr Muzamil Siddiqi, chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America and a scholar on the legal systems of Islam, told ABC News: ‘Even those who are executed have a proper burial given to them. It is strictly forbade any mutilation — even of the enemy’s body.
‘God reckons with a person’s deeds in the after life on judgement day. This is not a normal procedure. But if scholars in Pakistan said this is OK, it’s OK.’
Mohammed Qudah, a professor of Islamic law at the University of Jordan, said burying the Saudi-born bin Laden at sea was not forbidden if there was nobody to receive the body and provide a Muslim burial.
He said: ‘The land and the sea belong to God, who is able to protect and raise the dead at the end of times for Judgement Day. It’s neither true nor correct to claim that there was nobody in the Muslim world ready to receive bin Laden’s body.’
Oh, I’m sure.
Another Islamic scholar from Iraq, Abdul-Sattar al-Janabi, said: ‘What was done by the Americans is forbidden by Islam and might provoke some Muslims. It is not acceptable and it is almost a crime to throw the body of a Muslim man into the sea.
Almost a crime. Worse than murdering 3,000 infidels. That’s not a crime. Not even almost. Al-Janabi might protest that he does think that it was a crime, but if so, one might think it would temper his indignation over the burial at 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.
He said: ‘They don’t want to see him become a symbol, but he is already a symbol in people’s hearts.’…
What? I thought he was a Hijacker of Islam whom all Muslims hated!