neither fish nor fowl

A point I disliked about the bin Laden situation is the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too flavor of the rationale behind the disposal of the body.

They both dropped the body into the depths of the sea and claimed that the body was treated with all due respect demanded by Islam.

It seems to me that when you make these sorts of big decisions, trying to have it both ways often gives the worst of both worlds rather than the best of both.

Namely, they could have really treated the body with all due religious respect, having made very sure to have consulted the appropriate scholars in advance. They could still have used an unmarked grave and not told anyone where it was (but true enough, the secret could have leaked and a “shrine” could have been created; this is why the Nuremberg guys were cremated at Dachau [!!!] and their ashes dumped in a river, to avoid creating a Nazi pilgrimage site).

Or, they could simply have dumped bin Laden’s body unapologetically in the ocean and not made any claims to due religious respect at all. This would have been a “we’re really angry, so in your face!” sort of approach (a decaffeinated version of what the Russians have been said to do with bodies in analogous cases). They could then simply have ignored the scholars and put the burden on them to speak out in favor of the dignity of bin Laden, which is not the easiest thing to do for anyone who wants to retain any sort of remotely moderate image at all.

Instead, it seems to me that they tried to combine a bit of insult with claims to religious dignity. The effect of this is somewhat annoying, and to some people it is worse than annoying.