Claiming the Deceased

"Hindu-Muslim Family's Choice of Cremation Arouses Anger" - Anne Barnard

"The cremation dispute goes to the heart of a debate among Muslims in America about what makes someone a Muslim – to some of the critics, the fact that Shafayet Reja listed Islam as his religion on Facebook is enough."

In an era scarred by takfirist militancy, the question of what makes somebody a Muslim is a very salient one. For some people, a Muslim would be known by a defined set of outward marks – hijab, a beard and kufi, or even the position of one's hands in prayer. The article above reveals an opposite trend, in which a mere declaration of one's religious faith on Facebook is sufficient. The author precisely identified the real dispute at hand – not cremation itself, but the tug-of-war of religious identity that cremation and burial represent.

Conflicts like these where groups vie to claim souls – even deceased bodies – into their fold have a curious tendency to escalate beyond expectation. It’s interesting that although the author relates that the initial contention came from a "small group of Muslims," the dispute sprung from the New York-based Bengali newspapers to make national news in Bangladesh. From what I've seen, mixed Hindu-Muslim marriages like that of the Rejas are generally looked down upon by both Bengali Muslims and Hindus, and such families find themselves alienated to a degree from both communities. In the eyes of many from the Muslim community, Shafayet Reja's growing acceptance of his Muslim identity may have been seen as a victory over the secular society that allows such mixed marriages to occur – and his cremation, an unfortunate setback.

What rites were to be done with Reja's body could only be his family's choice – if the Muslim community had an issue with cremation, its only recourse could have been calm persuasion. The fact that he was cremated is nothing to grieve over, though, and scattered ashes won't make it any harder for God to resurrect anybody on the Day of Gathering. And as for the question of whether Facebook identity is enough to know if someone is a Muslim – I would say resoundingly yes. The Messenger's Paradigm, his Sunnah, is replete with examples that a legal definition of who is Muslim hinges on one basic, outward statement: “that there is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s slave and messenger.”