Replies

This Pershing story has just been discussed on the H-WAR military history bulletin board, and its validity is in great doubt.

I make no claim to having special insights into Islamic theology (my grasp of Christian theolology is tenuous enough), but it seems to me that God (or Allah) is not going to condemn a soul based on the method by which the body is interred.

but it seems to me that God (or Allah) is not going to condemn a
soul based on the method by which the body is interred.

I am not sure. There was a case not too long ago in which a funeral director was letting students from a tattoo school use his corpses to practice on, and some were Jewish, and when the families found out it was a great tragedy because a tattoo meant you would not get to heaven, something about defiling the body.

Also, some Christian faiths insist that the body be intact and not cremated to assure heavenly ascent. I worked as a backup EMT a while ago and severed fingers and so on were very important, so that bodies could be buried whole.

Also, remember Mohammed Atta's "last will", in which he described in great length the method to prepare his body, taken from the Koran and other similar texts? "Let no woman touch my body" and stuff like that.

It could be that post mortem preps are important.

Another thing- compare the Pershing story to Kipling's "King- of the Khyber Rifles". He has the British spread the rumor that the cartriges of his enemy (Muslims in the Afghanistan Khyber Pass, now Pakistan) were oiled with pig fat, so they were unwilling to tear open the paper cartriges with their teeth to load the muzzleloaders.

...it seems to me that God (or Allah) is not going to condemn a soul based on the method by which the body is interred.

The point isn't whether they will be condemned or not but that they think they will.