Question:

There has been a local dispute in which a Muslim community has prevented a Qadiani women from burying her husband in a Muslim cemetery. Given that Qadianis are consensually agreed to be outside the fold mainstream of Islam, is this a reasonable stance to take or is religious bigotry?

Answer:

This is not religious bigotry. We do not have an excommunicating authority in Islam but we do have a set of beliefs which are indisputable. Anybody calling into question these beliefs is considered a Murtadd (an apostate). The finality of Prophethood is established in the Qur’an in Chapter 33 where Allah says that Muhammad was not the father of any man among you, but he is the Messenger of God and the seal of all the Prophets. The Prophet, peace be upon him, himself confirmed this when he said, “I am the last of all the Prophets. There will be no more after me.” Thus the finality of Prophethood is an act of faith to which every Muslim must submit.

Those who dispute this belief with arguments, even though they may be couched in Islamic terms, have been declared as non-Muslims by all the scholars and research academies. As such they have no right whatsoever to be buried in a Muslim cemetery.

This is not bigotry. It is part of the Islamic way of life in which only Muslims should be buried in an Islamic cemetery to the extent that where a non-Muslim woman is married to a Muslim man and she passes away during pregnancy she is not to be buried in a Jewish or Christian cemetery because she is conceiving a Muslim child. Nor is she to be buried in a Muslim cemetery because she herself is not a Muslim. She has to be interred somewhere neutral.

(31 – Jana’iz 2)
15th November 1996
Shaykh Syed Mutawalli ad-Darsh
Faqih from Al-Azhar, Cairo
Chairman of the UK Shari’ah Council

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