Is it permissible to collect the bones in a grave in order to change the place of a grave?

Dear Brother / Sister,

It is not permissible to transfer graves to other places unless there is an important reason. No matter how old a cemetery is, it is essential to keep it as a cemetery even if it is no longer needed. It is regarded as violation of the right of dead people if the bones are transferred to another cemetery in order to sell the land or construct buildings there. For, in Islam, the rights of the dead are protected as much as the rights of the living people.

However, it is permissible to transfer the cemetery elsewhere for reasons such as flooding, building a road or the cemetery remaining on the enemy side.

After the dead body is put in the grave and soil is thrown on it, it is regarded to have been handed over to Allah by the congregation. The grave should not be opened unless there is a necessity. Examples of necessity are the burial of the dead body in a seized place or with a seized shroud, the place to be obtained by somebody else through preemption.  In those cases, the land or the grave is opened upon the request of the owner of the land or shroud. The grave is closed when the shroud is removed, or the dead body is transferred elsewhere. If this is not done, the owner can plant the land by smoothing it. The owner of the shroud can receive the equivalent of the shroud.

Unless a dead body is completely transformed into soil and its bones disappear, the grave cannot be opened and somebody else is not buried there. However, if there is no other place to bury the dead body, the bones are collected, and something like soil is put as a barrier between the dead body in the grave and the new dead body to be buried. Then, the grave is closed.

Two and more dead bodies cannot be buried in one grave unless there is a necessity. If there is a necessity, it is permissible to bury several people in one grave by placing a barrier like soil between dead bodies. As a matter of fact, this was applied for the martyrs of Uhud. The following is reported Jabir b. Abdullah:

"My father, who died at the Battle of Uhud, was buried with another martyr, Amr Ibn al-Jumuh, in the same grave. I was not willing to leave my father in a grave with someone else like that. I opened the grave six months later. I found my father as fresh as it was on the day I put him in the grave except his ear. I removed him and buried him in another grave alone."

The graves of the dhimmis (Christians and Jews) in the Islamic country are also under the protection like the graves of Muslims. Just as it is forbidden to torture them when they are alive so too is it forbidden to break their bones and to flatten their graves after their death. However, if it is necessary in a place that Muslims have just seized, it is possible and permissible to open the graves of the enemy, to remove their bones and to use that place for other purposes, such as making it a Muslim graveyard or a mosque. (Ibn Abidin, Raddul-Muhtar, Istanbul 1984, II/233-246; al-Fatawal-Hindiyya, Beirut 1400/1980 I/165-167; Ömer Nasuhi Bilmen, Büyük İslâm İlmihali, İstanbul 1985, p. 259-267).

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