Here in the Netherlands, you(r family) often lease(s) a spot on a graveyard. When people stop paying, your corpse gets dug up and whatever remains is disposed of (often cremated). If there’s plenty of space, the graveyard will probably leave the existing graves be, but if they fill up, there’s not much you can do. City graveyards in particular run into this.
According to various faiths, you’re not going to heaven if your body doesn’t get buried properly or if your body isn’t there when the end times come. Muslim communities have come together to form a forever-graveyard where their loved ones will supposedly be buried forever because existing graveyards couldn’t make any promises like that. I doubt those graveyards will last more than a hundred years, but at least the intent is there. Other communities will try to make sure people are buried in other countries where exhuming corpses isn’t standard practice.
So it depends on the space available to your community. Don’t expect to be buried forever in the middle of the city unless you have some special status, but if you live out in the middle of nowhere your body could lay there for hundreds of years. Lots of people get cremated too, so that helps a lot.
The concept is that you get a spot on a graveyard permanently as a muslim, but it is custom to give back the spot when noone is alive, who remembered the deceased relative, so usually in the third or fourth generation.
But why wouldnt a graveyard last “forever”? We have many church graveyards that can be tracked back to early medieval times, so easily a thousand years, in Germany.
I’m no expert on Islam but the people who started their own graveyard had an issue with bodies being exhumed eventually.
But why wouldnt a graveyard last “forever”?
Populations have exploded in the last 100-150 years, especially in densely populated cities. You can’t bury tens of millions of people and keep them in the ground for long.
Cremations were quite normal in many parts around the world, actuslly. In Europe, Christian influences caused a ban on them, but for ages cremations were the way to go. They make more sense anyway: people who cremate their dead are less likely to catch diseases from rotting corpses than people who handle put the (diseased) body back in the ground.
But muslims don’t embalm their deceased bodies, right? They also don’t use coffins, so eventually the remains will decompose with nothing remains? How long it took for unpreserved buried bodies to completely decompose?
How long it took for unpreserved buried bodies to completely decompose?
That is very dependent on the temperature, soil, humidity etc. E.g. a regularly wet, huminose soil at moderate temperatures will decompose anything much quicker than dry desert sand.
I don’t think the process of decomposition matters much if you believe the bones may not be disturbed when the resurrection brings them back to life. The “rules” differ depending on what particular religious flavour you follow, but in the end this comes down to religion and spiritualism more than anything measurable.
It’s also relatively quick. Most graveyards have a hard limit at around 1 year for allowing tombs and mausoleums to be reopened because that’s roughly the amount of time for a body to discompose such that it’s not a nuisance when it’s reopened. Reopening or exhuming a body too soon runs the risk of being a nasty experience for the gravekeepers. But 6 month to a year, you basically have only dirt and bones. Depending on how dry the environment is. Typical western embalming methods, while very efficient on the short term, like preventing decomposition during the next couple of weeks, won’t delay natural decomposition after a month or so.
Here in the Netherlands, you(r family) often lease(s) a spot on a graveyard. When people stop paying, your corpse gets dug up and whatever remains is disposed of (often cremated). If there’s plenty of space, the graveyard will probably leave the existing graves be, but if they fill up, there’s not much you can do. City graveyards in particular run into this.
According to various faiths, you’re not going to heaven if your body doesn’t get buried properly or if your body isn’t there when the end times come. Muslim communities have come together to form a forever-graveyard where their loved ones will supposedly be buried forever because existing graveyards couldn’t make any promises like that. I doubt those graveyards will last more than a hundred years, but at least the intent is there. Other communities will try to make sure people are buried in other countries where exhuming corpses isn’t standard practice.
So it depends on the space available to your community. Don’t expect to be buried forever in the middle of the city unless you have some special status, but if you live out in the middle of nowhere your body could lay there for hundreds of years. Lots of people get cremated too, so that helps a lot.
The concept is that you get a spot on a graveyard permanently as a muslim, but it is custom to give back the spot when noone is alive, who remembered the deceased relative, so usually in the third or fourth generation.
But why wouldnt a graveyard last “forever”? We have many church graveyards that can be tracked back to early medieval times, so easily a thousand years, in Germany.
I’m no expert on Islam but the people who started their own graveyard had an issue with bodies being exhumed eventually.
Populations have exploded in the last 100-150 years, especially in densely populated cities. You can’t bury tens of millions of people and keep them in the ground for long.
and hell even a hundred years ago graveyards in cities started becoming problematically full, that’s literally why cremations was invented.
Cremations were quite normal in many parts around the world, actuslly. In Europe, Christian influences caused a ban on them, but for ages cremations were the way to go. They make more sense anyway: people who cremate their dead are less likely to catch diseases from rotting corpses than people who handle put the (diseased) body back in the ground.
Just bury them together with nuclear waste. Two birds sealed under one stone and the radiation might give them superpowers in the afterlife
He’s still alive, he’s 75 but he’s still going strong.
But muslims don’t embalm their deceased bodies, right? They also don’t use coffins, so eventually the remains will decompose with nothing remains? How long it took for unpreserved buried bodies to completely decompose?
That is very dependent on the temperature, soil, humidity etc. E.g. a regularly wet, huminose soil at moderate temperatures will decompose anything much quicker than dry desert sand.
I don’t think the process of decomposition matters much if you believe the bones may not be disturbed when the resurrection brings them back to life. The “rules” differ depending on what particular religious flavour you follow, but in the end this comes down to religion and spiritualism more than anything measurable.
It’s also relatively quick. Most graveyards have a hard limit at around 1 year for allowing tombs and mausoleums to be reopened because that’s roughly the amount of time for a body to discompose such that it’s not a nuisance when it’s reopened. Reopening or exhuming a body too soon runs the risk of being a nasty experience for the gravekeepers. But 6 month to a year, you basically have only dirt and bones. Depending on how dry the environment is. Typical western embalming methods, while very efficient on the short term, like preventing decomposition during the next couple of weeks, won’t delay natural decomposition after a month or so.