Josh Voorhees has a related article at Slate.com, this one about the worshipping of Osama bin Laden, even if he's hard to find:
The White House says that it buried Osama Bin Laden at sea, in part, to deny his followers the chance to create a shrine honoring the al-Qaeda leader. Turns out, things might not work out as planned.
One of Britain’s leading Islamic scholars claims that some radical Muslims are already calling the Arabian Sea the Martyr’s Sea, and that the entire body of water could soon become the site of a pilgrimage, the Daily Mail reports. “Given Muslim ideas of holiness diffusing over large areas, it is possible that a pilgrimage will develop, as radicals stand on beaches contemplating the virtues of their dead hero,” Abdal Hakim Murad, Cambridge University’s Muslim chaplain, reportedly said in an interview on British radio. Murad was also critical of the decision to bury Bin Laden in the Arabian Sea in the first place, saying that a number Islamic scholars have deemed the move “religiously improper. Even mass murderers deserve a religiously valid burial,” he said, according to the paper. “We are judged on how we behave in a position of strength.”
The White House has taken pains to defend the burial decision, saying that the U.S. made sure to follow Islamic practices. President Obama made his feeling on the matter crystal clear in an interview with CBS News' 60 Minutes: “We took more care on this than, obviously, Bin Laden took when he killed three thousand people,” the president said, referring to the attacks of 9/11. “He didn’t have much regard for how they were treated or desecrated.”
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