Unearthing of war dead offends Islamic sensibilities
Scholars outraged, MICHAEL VALPY writes
theglobeandmail.com
By MICHAEL VALPY
Wednesday, May 8, 2002 – Page A3
Canadian soldiers committed offensive acts against Islam when they opened the graves of war dead in Afghanistan to collect DNA evidence from the bodies, Islamic scholars said yesterday.
Earle Waugh, a professor in the University of Alberta's department of religious studies, called the military's act outrageous. "In a normal situation, this would never be done. The bodies of the dead belong to Allah," he said.
Abdul Hai Patel, co-ordinator of the Islamic Council of Imams in Toronto, said it is permissible to interfere with graves under certain circumstances but he questioned whether the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda supporters would be considered a legitimate reason.
Prof. Waugh added: "Unless the Americans can come up with a better excuse than that they're looking for bin Laden, there's nothing about this that the Islamic world is going to accept."
Islamic belief is that bodies should wait in peace for the day of resurrection and judgment by God. To disturb the peace of the dead is considered repugnantly tasteless.
Imam Patel said a legitimate reason for disturbing a body would be a police investigation into a corpse's identity or the cause of death.
A Canadian military spokesman said it was U.S. forensic experts who actually collected the samples. The role of the Canadian troops was to provide military security.
However, the Canadians assisted in digging up the graves, said Major Tony White, attached to U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla.
The Canadian troops from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry learned of the graves in Afghanistan's Tora Bora region while on a mission to investigate caves known to have been used as hideouts by al-Qaeda fighters.
The area earlier had been bombed by U.S. military aircraft.
Major White said the Canadians were told about the location of the graves by elders in a nearby village. He said the impression of the Canadians was that the elders were indifferent to what happened to the graves.
"When it came time for taking samples, it was the U.S. forensic people who got involved in that," he said.
"No Canadians were involved in collecting. We're certainly not trained to do DNA sampling."
About 23 graves were dug up and hair samples were taken.
U.S. forensic experts have apparently been gathering this kind of evidence since the outset of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan.
But Prof. Waugh said Canada could not mitigate culpability by saying it was the Americans who interfered with the bodies. |
