Mandatory cremation: Lanka robs Muslims of their basic religious right
By: Vijay Srinivas
Tags: Sri Lanka, Covid-19, Islamaphobia, Coronavirus, Muslim

An illustration of the national flag of Sri Lanka/Pixabay

Sri Lankan officials forcing Muslims, the country’s religious minority, to cremate the bodies of those succumbed to Covid-19 is nothing but a nail in the coffin for ethnic harmony.

The Buddhist-majority island has introduced a policy on April 1 ordering mandatory cremation of Covid-19 victims, the move that Muslims term as an act against their basic religious right. Four out of nine people who died of the novel coronavirus infection have been cremated which is against the Islamic traditional funeral practice of not burying the dead bodies.

Given the intensity of the virus, Muslim communities themselves have come forward to waive-off their other significant rituals of washing and shrouding of cadavers as mentioned in farḍ kifāyah for scientific reasons but stood firm on their right over burial as it remains a practice that’s globally accepted.

The ninth case was a Muslim woman, Zubair Fathima Rinosa, forcibly cremated in Colombo only to be later discovered a non-Covid-19 patient.

The country’s controversial rule has been imposed on an arbitrary basis as the guidelines of World Health organization differs in its opinion. WHO allows burial of dead bodies and had slayed the myth that burial of cadavers are risky.

The spread of anti-Muslim rhetoric not just in Lanka but across the globe has left Muslims vulnerable particularly during the pandemic.

Buddhist nationalists have blamed Muslims in Sri Lanka for the spread of the coronavirus that has killed at least 306,000 lives and infected more than 4.5 million people across the globe.

Muslim organisations have alleged Buddhist nationalist group of spreading hate speech on social media and insisting people to not buy goods from Muslim shopkeepers.

“It’s [mandatory cremation policy] a part of their racist agenda where the extremist Buddhist forces are saying rest of the nation that they will teach Muslims a lesson”, says Hilmy Ahamed, Vice President of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka in a report.

Lanka’s opposition leader Sajith Premadasa has called for an end to the “discriminatory manner of conducting last rites”.

Five petitions have been filed against the Government’s order in the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka and those pleas are to be heard next week.

Buddhist nationalists have been hegemonistic since the end of bloody civil war. Islam’s very own style of certifying food products ‘the halal labelling system’ was scrapped back in 2013 after campaigns by certain Buddhist hardliners. Muslims have been under constant attack in Lanka for the last 10 years exactly after the war came to an end and the minority community received several blows after the easter Sunday attacks last year that paved way for Buddhist nationalists to vindicate their anti-Muslim bigotry.

International communities have voiced out against the stigmatisation of Muslims in Sri Lanka. Organisation of Islamic Coorperation (OIC) considered to be the second-largest inter-governmental group after the United Nations have condemned the ‘mandatory cremation’ policy and has raised concerns over the safety of Muslims and urged authorities to take swift action against anti-muslim sentiments prevailing in the island nation.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch too have condemned the move. Meenakshi Ganguly who is the South Asia director at HRW said, “the mandatory cremation policy has been condemned by four UN special rapporteurs as an act that violated freedom of religion and urged authorities to put an end to discrimination and not promote it.”

A nation with its history filled with pages of massacre must learn to understand its very own people and act accordingly, thereby not discriminating them irrespective of what religion or sect they belong to.

As of Saturday, Sri Lanka’s Covid-19 death toll stands at nine while more than 950 people have been infected.

(This story corrects a grammatical error in sixth paragraph)