Osama bin Laden's body mishandled

I don't mean that OBL's body was not handled in accordance with Islamic practice, although for the life of me I don't understand why the administration went to all the trouble to do so.

I mean what Damian Thompson writes in The Telegraph: Osama bin Laden dead – but no body. Now for an explosion of conspiracy theories.

The Islamic world is amazingly receptive to what I call “counterknowledge”. Let’s start by reminding ourselves that most people in Muslim countries have their doubts about 9/11, and millions them believe unquestioningly that it was plotted by the CIA. ...

It’s inconceivable that America would announce the death of its deadliest enemy without offering evidence that would convince any reasonable person; I’m surprised that it hasn’t been produced already. Moreover, why did it allow bin Laden’s body to be dropped into the sea? Is the US really so sensitive to Islamic burial practices that it is prepared to hand conspiracy theorists such a gift?

Well, I posted this morning that the conspiracy theories had already taken wing.

I think that the administration is so eager to prove that it respects Islam that these considerations never occurred to them. "We don't want Muslims mad at us!" is their greatest fear. So they rush-jobbed disposing of the body presumptively in accordance with Muslim practice. But, as Rand Simberg reasonably asks, "CAIR and other "moderates" continually remind us that Osama bin Laden was not what Islam is all about. Then why bury him as a devout Muslim?"

It has been reported that after Osama bin Laden was dispatched yesterday, he was given a burial at sea, in the “Islamic practice”:

In accordance with Islamic practice, bin Laden was washed and wrapped in a white sheet before buried at sea at 2 a.m. local time, senior U.S. military and intelligence officials said.

This was presumably done in the interest of impressing the “moderate” Muslims of the world with our respect for their religion, but if anything, it does just the opposite. What we were unwittingly implying by that politically correct act was that we agree with those who claim that Osama was a true Muslim, and that we don’t accept the account of the reformers that he was an apostate. What are the latter to make of it? And how does this in any way discourage his supporters, knowing that when we dispatch them to get their virgins (or raisins, or whatever) we will take pains to ensure their safe arrival in heaven?

Not that the solicitude of throwing OBL to sleep with the fishes did any good, no matter how carefully and Islamically it was done. The LA Times reports, "EGYPT: Islamic leader condemns Osama bin Laden's sea burial."

The head of Cairo's Al Azhar university, the most influential seat of Sunni Muslim learning, said that the burial of Osama bin Laden at sea was a violation of Islamic tradition.

The action “runs contrary to the principles of Islamic laws, religious values and humanitarian customs," Sheik Ahmed Tayeb was quoted as saying by Associated Press.

The customary Muslim practice is to place the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Sea burials are permitted only when death occurs on a ship, and the body cannot be quickly brought to shore, religious scholars said.

You just can't please some people.