24 Feb 2021
Authorities on the Indonesian island of Sumatra charged four healthcare workers with blasphemy, a crime in the country, on Tuesday after they allegedly violated Islamic law by bathing a deceased coronavirus patient’s corpse despite not being her
mahram, or unmarriable close family.
Islamic law forbids women from exposing their
aurat, or parts of their body normally covered for modesty’s sake, to men who are not their
mahram. The rule applies to the pre-burial bathing ritual of deceased persons practiced in Islam, which can only be performed for a deceased female by her
mahram.
Two nurses and two forensic staff members employed by a state hospital in North Sumatra province bathed a 50-year-old deceased female coronavirus patient in September 2020 as part of the hospital’s routine post-mortem hygiene practice but failed to ensure that the deceased woman’s family members or female hospital staff observed the bathing.