Wednesday 4 May 2011

Osama Bin Laden: The power of shrines


Arabian Sea Bin Laden's body is somewhere in the Arabian Sea
Osama Bin Laden's body was buried at sea to deny his followers a shrine, it has been widely reported. But why do the graves of leaders matter so much?
For a man who had been the world's most wanted, it was a deeply undistinguished final resting place.
The remains of Osama Bin Laden met an inauspicious fate - his body dropped into the ocean from an American aircraft carrier.
US officials were at pains to insist that the process was conducted in "strict conformance with Islamic precepts and practices".
But the purpose of his burial at sea was clear - to ensure that there was no grave to become a shrine for supporters, and a recruiting tool for extremist Islamism.

Leaders' last resting places

Men pray at Saddam Hussein's resting place
  • Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie, was buried in an unmarked grave after his overthrow. His remains were found in 1992 under a toilet in the Imperial Palace
  • The corpse of the Philippines' authoritarian former President Ferdinand Marcos lies in a refrigerated mausoleum while his family campaign for a state funeral
  • The Romanovs - the family of Russian Tsar Nicolas II - were shot dead and buried in a forest pit by the Bolsheviks after the October 1917 revolution. In 1998, the remains were reburied at St Petersburg cathedral
  • Chile's former leader Augusto Pinochet was given a military funeral in 2006 but then cremated as his family did not want a grave or memorial to become a focal point for protest - thousands died or disappeared during his 17-year-rule
It's a motive with clear historical antecedents. Victorious regimes, particularly when confronted with ideological movements with charismatic leaders, have often been anxious to deny their defeated enemies a rallying point, a place where sympathisers can gather to venerate their dead.
The partially-cremated corpse of Adolf Hitler was dug up by invading Soviet forces from its initial burial site in Berlin before being moved several times - its ultimate fate being shrouded in mystery, with some accounts claiming his skull and jawbone were taken to Moscow.
The Berghof, the dictator's home in the Bavarian alps, was demolished in the early 1950s by the West German government, who feared it would become a focal point for neo-Nazis. Other Nazi leaders executed at the Nuremburg trials by the Allies were cremated and their ashes were scattered in the Conwentzbach river to frustrate any attempt to by latter-day sympathisers to commemorate them.
At the other end of the political spectrum, the body of revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara was photographed perfunctorily by the enemies who killed him in Bolivia before his burial in an unmarked grave - his opponents perhaps anticipating the cult he would inspire.
The fate of Bin Laden echoes the British empire's approach to an earlier Muslim insurgent - Muhammad Ahmad, known as the Mahdi, whose tomb in Sudan was destroyed to prevent it becoming a rallying point for supporters. Continued

No comments:

Why cows may be hiding something but AI can spot it

  By Chris Baraniuk Technology of Business reporter Published 22 hours ago Share IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES Image caption, Herd animals like...