Muslims bitch about bin Laden ditched

Some Muslims are whining about bin Laden's corpse being dumped at sea. It's not Islamic enough to satisfy them. So what? We have every reason to think we should have stuffed him into a hog and dumped his body into a cess pool. But the fact is that governments have to act less dramatically in public these days. Romans were better at government, in many ways, such as putting rebel leaders in cages and wheeling them through the streets so ordinary people could jeer as the prisoner was taken to be humiliated by some disgusting public execution, like Vercingetorix or, better still, Jugurtha. As is, bin Laden's corpse must have been strapped with divers' weight belts to ensure that he hit the ocean floor. It would be a laugh if he'd been caught up in a Japanese drift net and turned into sushi, but we can rest assured that some bottom-feeding crustaceans are feasting instead. And Muslims should shut up about it. Who really cares what they think.

Asma Alsharif and Cynthia Johnston, "Bin Laden sea burial not in line with Islam, clerics say," ReutersAfrica. 3 May 2011.

RIYADH/DUBAI, May 3 (Reuters) - Clerics in Saudi Arabia, a staunch U.S. ally and the country of Osama bin Laden's birth, dismissed Washington's assertions it observed Islamic rites in disposing of the al Qaeda leader's body in the Arabian Sea.

Bin Laden, shot dead by U.S. forces in a raid on a compound in Pakistan on Monday, was placed in a weighted bag and dropped into the north Arabian Sea from the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, the Carl Vinson, the U.S. military said.

But many Muslims in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Gulf Arab region, including opponents to bin Laden's militant ideology, said the fact funeral rites were read for him did not diminish their shock at the way his body was disposed of.

"That is not the Islamic way. The Islamic way is to bury the person in land like all other people," said Saudi Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, an adviser to the Saudi Royal Court.

http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFLDE7420A020110503?sp=true

That might be the Islamic way for Muslims to bury each other. For everyone else, for those Muslims murder, nothing much matters. So, for now, dumping dead Muslims at sea is good enough. It will depress the crab market, though. I can live with it.