Using a dummy, Rizmina Hassan Ali demonstrates how to bathe and shroud a body for burial in accordance with Muslim tradition.
COLOMBO, SRI LANKA – The first time Rizmina Hassan Ali bathed and shrouded a body in preparation for burial, the experience so upset her that she decided the vocation was not for her.
Those who prepare a body for a Muslim burial here place the deceased on a rattan bed over a long basin. Using soft cloths, they wash the body with gentle strokes. If the family can afford it, they then apply perfume, camphor or sandalwood.
The body Hassan Ali volunteered to prepare in 2000 was that of a neighbor’s 11-month-old daughter.
“My daughter was also 11 months old then, and it was so emotionally traumatic for me to wash and shroud the body of a baby girl the same age,” she says.
Hassan Ali decided not to undertake any more funerals.
Later, while taking a course on Islam at a local mosque, Hassan Ali learned of the importance of funeral preparations for Muslims, she says. Under Islamic law, only a woman can prepare a woman’s body for burial. The husband of the deceased is the only man permitted to participate in the preparations.
There is no dearth of men to prepare the bodies of men for burial. However, families often need outside women to provide the service, and practitioners face an element of prejudice, Hassan Ali says.
Some Muslims see the work as undignified and assume that practitioners are poor women who provide the service strictly for the money.
Five years after doing her first burial preparation, Hassan Ali realized that only a few women were providing this vital service in her community.
So, in 2005, Hassan Ali decided to set aside the trauma and immerse herself in performing the prescribed preparations.
“I realized and understood the merits a Muslim achieves in performing funeral rites,” Hassan Ali says. “I took this up as a community service.”
One of fewer than 10 women who provide this service in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s economic capital, Hassan Ali is much sought after today. To alleviate the dearth of women performing this service, she also trains others.
The number of women providing preparations for Muslim women’s funerals has dwindled to a handful in Colombo, raising concerns among Muslims. Fear and a negative view of this service have kept many women from carrying out funeral preparations, even for their family members.
Community leaders are training young women in the rituals and teaching them the importance of this service.
Muslims are the third-largest religious group in Sri Lanka, after Buddhists and Hindus. They make up nearly 10 percent of the population, according to the Sri Lanka Census of Population and Housing, 2012.
Mohammed Nazeem Naim, president of the Colombo Muslim Association, says there has always been a dearth of women who prepare bodies for funerals.
Hassan Ali is one of five women in the association’s Janaza Welfare Society registered to provide funeral services. The association shares that information with all the mosques in Colombo. Since the women’s husbands coordinate the women’s communication with families and mosques, they are registered as contacts.
Men are more involved in mosque activities than women, and plenty of them are trained to prepare men’s bodies for burial, Naim says. And unlike women, men are able to oversee the entire process, from bathing and shrouding to transporting the body on a bier and during burial. In accordance with Muslim tradition, women do not accompany a body to the burial site.
Hassan Ali’s role in the community has been almost 30 years in the making.
Hassan Ali was 10 years old when she realized the importance of funeral preparation, she says. She remembers her grandmother getting upset about the way her great-grandmother’s body was prepared for burial. Her grandmother said she hoped a family member would one day provide this service.
Hassan Ali now lives with her husband, their six children and her mother in a one-room house in a tenement area in Colombo 2, a crowded commercial area of Colombo.
Her husband, who drives a three-wheel taxi, is the family’s primary breadwinner, Hassan Ali says. He is supportive of her work; he drives her to all the funeral preparation sites.
Hassan Ali estimates she has performed preparations for more than 2,000 funerals since 2005. She spends almost two hours preparing a body for burial.
“It’s hectic at times when there are up to four funerals on the same day,” Hassan Ali says with a gentle smile.
The families of women she prepares for burial give her a small monetary gift – about 2,000 rupees ($15), on average. They also cover her travel costs, which amount to about 1,500 rupees ($11) when she travels outside Colombo 2, she says.
“We don’t fix prices for our service, as we consider it more a social service,” Hassan Ali says.
Hassan Ali was one of 60 young women who took the Islamic course at the Akbar Mosque in 2004, but today only she and classmate Zeenath Shyam, 37, perform funeral rites for women in their neighborhood.
“One needs to be brave to handle a corpse in whatever condition it may be,” Shyam says. “Most shy away as they feel uneasy, even after training.”
Shyam, whose mother used to perform the rituals for family and neighbors, is proud to carry on the tradition, she says. But it can be difficult and exhausting.
“I have to travel very far sometimes because some areas in the suburbs don’t have women who can do the funeral rites,” she says.
Training other women is an important aspect of the vocation.
Hassan Ali presents an annual demonstration to students taking the Islamic course at Akbar Mosque. She also trains women in the households she serves.
“I insist on family members being present to assist, to get rid of their fear of making mistakes,” she says.
Every two or three months, Hassan Ali is invited to demonstrate the rituals for women’s gatherings organized by mosques and Muslim associations. The hosting groups range in size from 10 to 100 women.
Women who learn the rituals go on to perform them for funerals in their families.
“Today I don’t receive any calls from them as they are able to attend to the rites on their own,” Hassan Ali says. “I feel proud of the fact that I have done a great service for them.”
During these demonstrations, Hassan Ali also gives Islamic teaching about funerals. Determined to dispel misconceptions about the rituals and women who perform them, she urges women to approach the work with proper reverence.
“Some treat this work with little respect, or consider it only as a task to earn money,” she says.
Other women in the Muslim community have also recognized the urgent need to train more women in burial services.
Saadiqa Farih Fauz, 60, though not a funeral preparer herself, travels around Sri Lanka demonstrating burial rituals for Muslim women.
“Ten years ago, there was a turning point in my life, when I studied Islam further through holy books and realized that funeral rites were incumbent on the family members,” Fauz says.
She realized that women who performed funeral preparations professionally were training only their daughters. She also realized their incentive was the income rather than the merit they would gain after death.
In 2005 Fauz began educating women, including Hassan Ali, on the importance of learning and performing burial preparations. She has also published training booklets.
“If awareness is created among family members of this obligation, we can bridge the gap in the dearth of this service,” Fauz says.
Zeenathul Murshida Mohamed Nizar, 47, watched Hassan Ali prepare her mother’s body for burial in 2005. Since then, Mohamed Nizar’s family has called on Hassan Ali’s services many times, most recently in October 2014.
Mohamed Nizar has helped Hassan Ali a few times during these rituals, she says. But she would not want to perform the rituals as an occupation.
“I simply cannot do it alone, and never will,” she says.
Leaders of Colombo’s Muslim community recognize the urgent need to train more women in this service, Naim says.
In 2001, the Colombo Muslim Association introduced the funeral preparation training in the two-year Islamic instructional course conducted by member mosques.
About 1,500 boys and girls have gone through the training program.
The association is also developing a brochure to distribute to Muslim associations and mosques. The brochure summarizes Islamic teachings about funeral rituals and the merit gained by providing this service. It also encourages people to organize training and demonstrations in their communities.
Each mosque has a funeral association that provides the washing basins and biers needed for funeral rituals, Naim says. When families can’t afford the ritual preparations, these associations also sometimes provide small grants to hire gravediggers and purchase the cloths needed to bathe and shroud a body in keeping with tradition.
Since 2011, the rituals associated with funerals have been part of Islamic studies in the secondary school curriculum developed by the Ministry of Education, says Husna Ansar, sectional head of Rawdha Aa’isha Girls’ School, a private Islamic girls’ school in Colombo.
Until 2014, the students only learned about the rituals in theory, but some schools in Colombo have begun to include demonstrations of them, Ansar says. She hopes to include demonstrations of funeral preparations in her lesson plans this year.
Hassan Ali hopes to conduct her first demonstrations at Muslim girls’ schools soon.
She has been invited to do a demonstration at the Fathima Muslim Ladies College in Colombo 12, another area in the city, and eagerly awaits confirmation of the date.
“With the help of Allah, I should be able to complete my task by empowering women to do this community service and receive merits,” she says. “My work will extend to all Muslim women.”
Kumala Wijeratne, GPJ, translated some interviews from Malay, Sinhala and Tamil.
