In contemporary humanitarian crises, handling the dead presents significant practical and ethical challenges. With a significant number of armed conflicts occurring in Muslim contexts, understanding how Islamic law mandates dignified treatment of the deceased is essential to ensure that forensic interventions align with cultural and legal norms.

In this post, Dr Ahmed Al Dawoody, ICRC Legal Adviser for Islamic Law, examines how Islamic legal traditions address matters such as collective burial, rapid interment, exhumation, autopsy, burial at sea, and gender sensitive handling of remains. He argues that these rules both reinforce and complement international humanitarian law (IHL), offering forensic practitioners culturally grounded pathways to uphold the dignity of the dead while navigating operational realities in Muslim majority settings.