Recently, a gut wrenching event form our history was shared by Dr. Omendra Ratnu at The Jaipur Dialogue conclave.  The audience was told in detail about the historical event called Saka Johar, where Hindu women jumped into fire along with children under the age of 10, during the attacks on Rajputs by the Jihadis.  People who have no knowledge of our history, or are misled by narratives churned up by mischievous historians, still raised the question why the women chose this path instead of the men ‘fighting back’. Or why does a woman have to burn herself in this manner? In this write up, we will try to find some answers to these questions.

The gruesome killing of Shraddah at the hands of Aftab has once again reminded us how dangerous it is for young women to get too close to the boys from a certain community.  There is plenty of awareness about this menace in the society, and although we keep failing to protect our girls completely, discussions around this topic are being held openly, both in personal gatherings as well as on social media.  At the same time, there are certain other very pertinent and horrific menaces to do with this ideology which are still not know to general public, one of them being Necrophilia.

Earlier this year, a man of Pakistan origin was jailed for sexually assaulting a number of corpses in the UK. The report on the incident read:

A warped “monster” who broke into a funeral parlour before having sex with a woman’s corpse has been jailed for six years. Kasim Khuram, 23, forced his way into a Co-op undertakers before violating a dead body at around 1.40am on November 11 last year. A court heard how he lifted the lids of several coffins before selecting his victim. Khuram then removed the body from the coffin, took off her clothes and then “interfered with her” in the chapel of rest, leaving her face down on the floor.

Another female body was found face down in a coffin with her lower clothing pulled down while seven other corpses, including a baby, were disturbed. Police were alerted by the alarm at the funeral parlour on Walsall Road, in Great Barr, Birmingham, and turned up to find the depraved pervert still at the scene. Officers said he was “more concerned” about leaving his watch behind. Khuram, who had been drinking vodka and smoking mamba, told officers: “I bet you think I’ve been sh***ing them don’t you?” and sickeningly added: “every hole is a goal.”

One can argue that Necrophilia is a depravity not unique to any one modern culture, but only Islam contains scriptures, commentaries, and fatwas (Islamic decrees) permitting the macabre practice.

The commentary available on the issue unfortunately leads to the Prophet of Islam, like so many other problematic facts related tooth’s community.

A hadith  exists in six of Islam’s classical reference texts which narrates an incident of the Holy Prophet taking off his shirt and then lying in a coffin with a deceased woman.  Some sources quote that the said woman was his Aunt who, while being very close to him in life, never came into the fold of Islam.  The Prophet explained that this act would purify her and free her from her sins of dying a Kafir.

I dressed her in my shirt so that she may be dressed in heavenly robes, and I lay with her in her grave so that the pressures of the grave may be alleviated from her.

One can interpret this, and there certainly is no absolute reason to maintain that Muhammad was actually copulating with the corpse. There are, however, some hurdles.

There are some alternative and very disturbing explanations of this incident, which include the literal meaning of the Arabic phrase used in the response of the Holy Prophet.  Allegedly the same word is used for intercourse in the Arabic language.

Apart from this, sunni Islam’s four orthodox schools of jurisprudence namely, al-Hanafi, al-Hanbali, al-Maliki, and al-Shafi’i — implicitly permit necrophilia. In the section on adultery, the Maliki compilation mentions this:

If a husband enters his dead wife — any which way, from front or behind — there is no penalty for him. ( Sharh Mukhtasar al-Khalil fi al-fiqh al-Maliki)

According to Imam Shafai’s instructions in the compilation

A dead body need not be washed after you have sexual intercourse with it. Rather, you just need to wash your penis. (Book of Purity – Chapter of Washing)

Then there is the very disturbing Hadis in the most revered and all round acceptable compilation of Hadis, known as Sahih Bukhari

Narrated Anas bin Malik:

We were (in the funeral procession) of one of the daughters of the Prophet (ﷺ) and he was sitting by the side of the grave. I saw his eyes shedding tears. He said, “Is there anyone among you who did not have sexual relations with his wife last night?” Abu Talha replied in the affirmative. And so the Prophet told him to get down in the grave. And so he got down in her grave.
Sahih al-Bukhari 1285, Book 23, Hadith 45,

The fact that this disgusting act is taken as something approved in these Hadis, and that this is a verified Hadis, shows to tell what place Necrophilia has in the ideology.

Now we come to another moot point. All of these narrations can be challenged as being taken out of context etc, so we need to ascertain if these practices are ongoing in the present day, with the approval of Ulema.  In other words, the question arises, Do modern-day ulema permit necrophilia?

In 2011 a leading Moroccan cleric and founding member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, Sheikh Abdul Bari Zamzami, issued a fatwa permitting the Muslim husband to copulate with his dead wife. He prefaced his decree by saying that, although he does not necessarily approve of this act, it is not for him to ban what Islam permits. As proof, he cited the aforementioned rulings of Islam’s schools of jurisprudence.

In April 2012, when the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi was president of Egypt, news that Islamist Egyptian parliamentarians were trying to pass a law legalizing necrophilia appeared. The news was reported by Al Ahram, Egypt’s most reputable paper, but it was quickly dismissed as a hoax in Western media.

That may have been true then, but not now. In late 2017, necrophilia was again mentioned and legitimized, and this time by Sheikh Sabri Abdul Raeuf — a professor at Egypt’s Al Azhar, the Islamic world’s most prestigious madrassa.

During a televised show in Egypt, the Sheikh-professor was asked if it is permissible for a husband to penetrate his wife after death. He replied: “It is not favorable in Islam; however the Islamic law considers it as Halal,” meaning “permissible,” not a sin or crime.

A Youm7 Arabic report titled (translation) “The Books of Al-Shafi’i, Al-Hanbali, and Al-Hanafi Reveal That Sex With a Corpse Is Not Adultery” verified the professor’s claim.

The Jihadist mindset and the activities carried out by them, have always followed a set pattern. They enter an area through conceited means, they build in numbers gradually under various guises, they attack forcefully once they have a foothold, and they destroy all things living who do not submit to the ideology.  The incidences of murder and rape are common in Jihai led wars and Mughals in India have been no exceptions.  It is therefore only natural that Rajputs would fear the wort from these invaders, and did what they could to protect their women and children from non ending torture, both while alive and after death.

Rajeev Srinivasan– pens this sentiment very clearly when he writes: “Jauhar is a magnificent act of chivalry and courage in the face of certain defeat – the womenfolk and children enter the funeral pyre so that even their dead bodies will not be desecrated by the invading hordes; and the men ride out to fight to death in a shaka wearing saffron robe. Death before dishonour. That is one of the most stirring tales of valour, much as the West likes to talk about Thermopylae and other tales of honourable warriors.”

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