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From: abdali@tekchips.UUCP (Kamal Abdali)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Worship of corpses by Christians
Message-ID: <684@tekchips.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Sep-86 22:52:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekchips.684
Posted: Fri Sep 26 22:52:46 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Sep-86 02:36:26 EDT
References: <1093@hoptoad.uucp> <544@ubvax.UUCP> <3290@watmath.UUCP> <1190@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU>
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR
Lines: 35
Keywords: Corpse worship and Islam
Xref: linus talk.religion.misc:280 net.religion.christian:4754

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In article <1190@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU>, speter@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU 
(Peter Osgood) writes:
> Let us get one thing very straight, we Catholics worship one
> person and one person *only*, God.
> 
> We pray to Mary and the Saints to intervene for our causes.
> 
> Finally, this practice is/was not limited to us, in fact, in
> Damascus in the the central Mosque, which I visited, there is
> a crypt where the head of John the Baptist is purported to rest.
> This, surprise surprise all you crusaders, is the second holiest
> place in Islam and John the Baptist one of their holiest people.
> They, Moslems, still go to that crypt to worship.  This is the
> only case of "corpse worship" that I have *ever* witnessed.
> 
> 				---peter osgood--

1.  According to the Muslim consensus, the holiest sites in Islam are the
Sacred Mosque at Mecca, the Prophet's Mosque at Medina, and the Aqsa
Mosque at Jerusalem, in that order.  The Omayyad Mosque at Damascus is
just as sacred as any other mosque, no more and no less.

2.  There are special prayers to be offered at graves, but they are addressed
to God, not to the buried.  These prayers should not be construed as corpse 
worship.

3.  The excessive devotional behavior of the kind that you witnessed at 
the grave of John the Baptist does take place at many shrines, and is even
directed towards persons much less holy than John (who is considered a 
"prophet" in Islam).  But the vast majority of Muslims condemns such behavior 
strongly.  The puritans consider as outright un-Islamic any display of
devotion that has the faintest semblance of worship of any one but God.
In the Prophet's Mosque at Medina, guards are stationed to stop people from 
clinging to or kissing the fence around the Prophet Muhammad's Tomb.