Bin Laden's sea burial sparks controversy

White House officials decided before Sunday's raid that if U.S. troops killed Osama bin Laden, they would bury him at sea in order to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine for his followers, a White House official said Monday.
"The burial of bin Laden's remains was done in strict conformance with Islamic precepts and practices," said John Brennan, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser.
But some Islamic scholars and clerics were divided Monday over whether the sea burial was appropriate or an insult to Muslims. Several said bin Laden should have been buried on land with his head pointed toward Mecca. Sea burials are allowed, they said, only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship.
The burial at sea "runs contrary to the principles of Islamic laws, religious values and humanitarian customs," said Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, grand Imam of Cairo's al-Azhar mosque, Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning.
But Akbar Ahmed, Islamic studies chairman at American University, said the sea burial prevented bin Laden's resting place from becoming a focus for discontent. "Shrines are very powerful," he said. "Shrines of controversial figures in Muslim history become centers to attract the angry."
After the raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, military forces flew his body to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, in the North Arabian Sea, first making an unspecified stop en route.
The body was washed in accordance with Islamic custom, placed in a white sheet, then put inside a weighted bag, placed on a board, tipped up and then "eased into the sea," a senior defense official said. Is he really dead?