Dubai: A French woman has won an order by the French court to take the body of her deceased husband and cremate it against his Muslim Moroccan family.
The Moroccan man, who was a resident of Bordeaux in the south of France, died five days after being admitted to a hospital due to a poisonous insect bite.
Hassan, 45, was married to a Catholic French woman and had a son and a daughter. He did not have a French passport only residency papers.
The wife insisted to cremate his body. Hassan’s family, his mother and brothers, refused the wife decision and insisted that Hassan lived a Muslim and passed away a Muslim, and they will bury him according to Islamic rituals.
Cremation is forbidden in Islam. The body has to be buried as soon as possible. A ritual of bathing and wrapping the body with a white cloth is a must. A special prayer is held, the body is put down in a grave with head towards Makkah.
The body of Hassan was supposed to be cremated last Friday, when his family and Moroccan consulate stopped the procedure and took the case to court.
According to Hassan’s brother, he was contacted by the Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, who promised them that the case is going to be resolved diplomatically, Anadolu news agency reported.
In a similar case, last May the Moroccan embassy in Italy stopped the cremation of a Moroccan man, just 20 minutes before it took place.
The Moroccan’s Italian wife also took the decision to cremate his body after he committed suicide in Brescia northern of Italy. Moroccan expatriates in Italy back then took it on themselves to stand against it and notified their embassy of the cremation.
Reverse migration of the dead
The Absence of Muslim cemeteries is a problem also facing Muslim Moroccans and Algerians in France. Only three cemeteries for Muslims are found in France. And in French law no one is allowed to own a lifetime grave. A grave is rented for 10, 15 or 30 years.
When the rent is over and if the family of the deceased doesn’t renew the rental, the French authorities exhume the remains and cremate them. This is still not allowed in Islam. There must be respect for the grave. No one is allowed to reopen the grave.
And that’s why you find yearly thousands of bodies of French Muslim citizens of Moroccan and Algerian origin, returned for burial in their homeland.
