PH MUSLIMS HONOR OSAMA; MARCH FROM MOSQUE TO US EMBASSY ON FRIDAY

MANILA, Philippines—Manila’s Muslim community will offer a memorial to Osama bin Laden after Friday’s noontime prayers at the Golden Mosque in Quiapo.

Sheikh Jamil Yahya, chair of the Bangsamoro Supreme Council of the Ulamas, has been invited to lead the prayers and deliver the khutbah (sermon), according to an advisory. He is to lead a funeral service for Bin Laden afterwards.

After the memorial, a number of Filipino secular and civil society groups are to hold a “sympathy march-rally” from the mosque to the US embassy on Roxas Boulevard.

Nash Pangadapun, secretary general of Maradeka, an umbrella group of Muslim civil society organizations, academic groups and political parties, Thursday said many Filipino Muslims, particularly the imams (clerics) and ulamas (scholars), were critical of the way the US government had disposed of Bin Laden’s body.

“If it’s really true that he’s dead, then his body shouldn’t have been thrown to the sea. It should have been given to his family [for] a decent burial. The US claim that he was buried in accordance with Islamic law is not true because Islamic law requires earth burial for the dead,” Pangadapun told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a phone interview.


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