Burial of the Dead

Once, I participated in someone’s burial. After his death, his body was washed and wrapped in a shroud made of new cloth. Then, people read the funeral prayer and, lifting the bier on their shoulders, they took it to a graveyard. There, they laid the body in a grave very respectfully. Mud was then poured on the grave.

I thought to myself, “Why has Islam ordained such deference for a dead body?”

It is true that after a person dies his body is nothing but a lump of mud. But despite this, it isn’t thrown away, treated like some ordinary mud. Rather, it is given the same treatment as a human being.

This commandment to treat ‘mud’ like a human being is not for the sake of the deceased person, but, rather, out of consideration for the living. Through the dead person a message is given to the living, telling them that they too will meet the same fate one day. In this way, those who are living should see themselves in the form of the dead. They should experience death before dying.

According to the Islamic custom, when a corpse is being buried in the grave, those who are participating in the burial take some mud in their hands three times and put it in the grave. When they do this the first time, they say Minha khalaqnakum (‘From the earth We [God] have created you’). The second time, they say Wa fiha nuidukum (‘And We return you to it’). And the third time they say Wa minha nukhrijukum taratan ukhra (‘And from it We shall bring you forth a second time’).

This putting of mud in the grave is the climax of the whole process. In this way, it is explained to those who are still alive what their own fate will be one day.