While the Muslim community has rejected outright a new environmentally-friendly freeze-drying method of disposing of corpses proposed to replace burial and cremation, the Hindu community has adopted a cautionary "wait and see" attitude.
"A body - be it alive or dead - should be respected. It cannot be disfigured at any stage," the Jamiatul Ulama, a council of Muslim theologians in Durban, said on Monday, adding that for this reason, it could not support the method of freeze-drying.
The new method, invented by Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak, involves freeze-drying bodies and then shattering them into powder with ultrasonic sound waves.
With the new freeze-drying method, the body is frozen hundreds of degrees below freezing point in liquid nitrogen before it is hit by ultrasonic waves, shattering the body into a few kilograms of odourless powder.
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But the Ulama's Ahmed Kathrada said: "We respect the human body in any form... our primary concern is that we cannot reduce it to disfigurement whether living or dead... there should be the utmost respect for the dead," Kathrada said.
He said that while Islam respected the choice of disposal by other religious faiths, including cremation, he said the best way to dispose of the body in the Muslim faith was burial.
The SA Hindu Dharma Sabha's Ram Maharaj said that while the Hindu emphasis was on the soul and not the body, opinions about new innovative techniques such as freeze-drying needed to be canvassed at a national Hindu conference.
eThekwini municipality director for cemeteries and crematoria, Royal Ntombela, welcomed the new method. He said it would alleviate the critical land shortage for cemeteries.
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