It seems that Boston Marathon bombing suspect has been laid to rest right here in the Old Dominion, near the birthplace of our famous favorite son, Secretariat. (I refuse to recognize him by name.)
At first I was ready to blast the Governor, before I read the article. Come to find out, he had nothing to do with it. It seems that some good Christian woman, Martha Mullen, felt mercy. According to the Washington Post:
“My first thought was, Jesus says love your enemies and not hate them after they’re dead,” Mullen, a Richmond mental health counselor and seminary school graduate, said Friday.
“My second thought was, okay, we can bury Adam Lanza, you know. Or the guy who shot up [Virginia] Tech,” added Mullen, 48. “And this guy for some reason is different. And the only difference that I can tell is that people think that he’s a terrorist or he’s a foreigner or he’s Muslim.”
Her third thought: Maybe she could help. With a flurry of e-mails and calls to faith leaders in Richmond and police officials in Massachusetts, she wound up facilitating Tsarnaev’s burial at a small Islamic cemetery in Doswell.
Having reached out to Jewish, Hindu and Muslim leaders, as well as her own Methodist pastor, Mullen hoped that Tsarnaev’s burial in a plot she located in central Virginia would demonstrate “the peaceful side of faith in action.”
The problem is, no one knew about this action. The locals pretty much recoiled when they found out that once proud Virginia was now the final resting place of a terrorist. The WaPo reported:
But as news came Friday that the bombing suspect had been quietly interred in Doswell, some residents and officials recoiled at the idea that their community would provide Tsarnaev’s final resting place.
“He shouldn’t have rest,” said Harold Nelson, 53, an elevator mechanic. “I hope his soul is in eternal damnation. He took a lot of innocent life, and [there is] no reason for that.”
Said Charlotte Cropper, a 60-year-old retail clerk: “I think they should have shipped him back to wherever he came from, or did him like they did bin Laden and drop him in the ocean.”
Doswell is also home to Kings Dominion in addition to being near the birthplace of Secretariat. Caroline County and Hanover County are both expressing disbelief. Lest you think our chairman of the Board of Supervisors is colorful, Corey Stewart certainly can’t hold a candle to the Hanover chairman Peterson who said: “What I think is they should have cremated him and put in the Boston municipal dump with the rest of the trash,” Peterson said, adding, “I’m being facetious.”
Tell us how you really feel, Chairman Peterson.
So should Virginia officials have been told or is burial a private matter? I can’t help but smile at the thought that some woman (perish the thought) who is part of the great Infidel was kind enough and yes, Christian enough (more so than I woujld be, for sure.) to attend to this misguided soul in his death. She even had him planted in a small Islamic cemetery. Many of us would spit on him and keep on walking.
Then there are those who talk the talk and walk the walk. Martha Mullen appears to be one of those people.
The opposition to burial sites for this guy, while understandable at some primitive, superficial level, struck me as being almost superstitious. It’s a dead body, for goodness sake. It’s just a bunch of chemical elements undergoing transformation in form. Why should anyone care where it’s disposed of?
I also felt a great deal of sympathy for the poor uncle, who, by virtue of living here and being a relative, got the duty of finding a place to bury this “loser” (his term).
@Scout
It probably is superstitious but I guess a lot of our burial/death practices are.
We also seem to have a penchant for wanting to violate the practices of other cultures. [she said as she admitted to thinking, albeit briefly, about burying him on the outskirts of some pig farm]
I wouldn’t do it, of course, but the thought flashed through my brain before better angels pushed it out.
Those better angels are not equally available to all. Some seem to have more of them than others. But they are important.
No. I have absolutely NO sympathy for this person, but I, as a human being, feel that those in his family, and who once loved him, DO have a right to depose of his corpse
in the way they feel is OK. What if it had been an American born Muslim? Would that have made a difference. I’m just wondering.
Working at my thrift shop today, I heard some pretty awful comments, so I know it’s on a lot of people’s minds.
I think its our desire to get even, to settle the score, even in death. Perhaps its just the human condition.
Get even? Not allowing a family to bury the body of one of their own is “getting even”?
I detest the man for what he did, but as a human being, I try to put myself in the place of his family members. He has parents, he has a brother (no good-nik), he has an uncle who is putting hemself in a situation, where he might be disliked, even hated. BUT, he’s doing what he feels needs to be done. The burial place is a Muslim cemetary. Do they not have the right to bury anybody of their faith? Does it desecrate the soil of the US?
As always – I’m wondering. I’m asking. Trying to find out.
Was there this much difficulty in finding a place to bury Timothy McVeigh? He killed a helluva lot more people.
McVeigh was cremated. The ashes were given to his lawyer, who spread some in an unknown location and gave the rest to McVeigh’s parents. McVeigh reportedly once had the crazy idea of having some of his ashes spread at the monument in Oklahoma City, but that got nixed somehow. One of the roadblocks with the current burial was that cremation is absolutely forbidden in Islam.
McVeigh sure had no shortage of arrogance. Geez.
Not sure I think the parents should have that option. I don’t know what the brother is going to do with a dead body. He seems rather occupied.
While my first choice would have been to have him cremated and mailed to his mother, this is fine. I think its really a non-issue.
Tell that to some of the good ole boys and girls from down state. They feel like their soil has been descrecrated. I don’t think it is a non issue to some of them.
I do find it interesting that even for me, my reaction was visceral to Tsarnevs burial plot, and yet, I don’t recall spending a millisecond of thought on where Lanza was going to be buried. Lanza killed 19 children, is he not as evil?