The culture of cremation of the dead is no longer linked to the religions of East Asian countries, but many Western countries with a Christian majority are following the same steps, albeit with different motives.

Year after year, the phenomenon of burning the dead increases in Europe and North America, after underground burial was the well-established tradition in those countries, and with this phenomenon increases the thought of benefiting financially and practically from the remains of the dead in heating from the winter bloom after companies benefited from it for commercial purposes.

And now 85% of the Swiss choose to cremate their dead, while the rate of cremation of the dead reached 77% in Denmark, 75% in Germany and 73% in Britain, according to the German News Agency.

In North America, a 2019 report by the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) revealed the growing popularity of cremation, with rates outpacing burials for the fourth year in a row.

The number of licensed crematoriums in the United States increased by 8.9% over the course of 2017 and 2018, and crematoriums occupy nearly a third of funeral homes.

According to the report titled "Cremation and Burial," by 2040 the cremation rate in the United States is expected to be 78.7%, while the burial rate is expected to be only 15.7%.

The report indicated that this is evidence that cremation is not a fading trend, but rather a phenomenon that is accepted and even preferred by people.

Although the Corona pandemic may have contributed to the increase in the phenomenon of cremation, there are other, more important reasons that drive people in the West to resort to burning the bodies of their dead, the most important of which is the low economic cost of cremation, which amounts to a third of the cost of burial in the traditional way, which requires equipment for a casket or wooden coffin and burial ceremonies. and other additional expenses.

The cost of renting a permanent grave in some French cities is more than 7,000 euros, while it reaches 15,528 euros in the French capital, Paris, according to a report by Le Monde newspaper published in October 2018.

In the Netherlands, the cost of burial ranges between 1,000 and 4,000 euros per year, depending on the location and whether it is a private grave or a public cemetery.

85% of Swiss choose to burn their dead (Reuters)

The Christian Church's leniency with post-mortem cremation became a motivating factor for another sect, after it was strict in that.

Other sources claim that cremation has a positive impact on the environment, as the process of burning bodies instead of burying them provides larger areas on the ground that the living can benefit from, but burning bodies requires a lot of fuel, and results in millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

The remains after death

The cremation process usually takes place by placing the body in a coffin or a container and burning it in a special oven. This process takes two to three hours, at a temperature of two thousand degrees Celsius.

After that, the rest of the bones are crushed until it becomes ashes, placed in an urn, and handed over to the relatives of the deceased.

Some relatives of the deceased may keep the remains of the remains in bottles, others bury them in a cemetery, and some people may request that the ashes of their bodies be scattered in one of the places they prefer, and some of them scatter the ashes of his body in the sea.

With the increase in the rate of cremation, the issue of the fate of remains after cremation is raised. The American cremation report indicated that about 42% of cremated remains are returned to families, while 35% are buried in a cemetery, and 16% of cremated remains are scattered in different locations.

Hence the spread of "cremation of the dead" companies in Europe with the aim of using their ashes to create coral reefs or to compress them and turn them into diamonds.

According to German news agency media reports, experts in European countries are studying the idea of ​​benefiting from the heat generated by burning corpses for heating in the winter.

In countries such as Sweden and Denmark, companies are trying to take advantage of the heat generated by the burning process to heat buildings, especially after the energy crisis that afflicted the old continent after the Russian gas was cut off due to the Russian war on Ukraine.

And the German news agency quoted Lennart Anderson, a director of one of the incinerators in Sweden, that they will use the burning process to heat their own buildings, and in the future they can connect to the heating network in the areas surrounding the incinerator.

The cost of burial in cemeteries ranges between 1,000 and 4,000 euros in the Netherlands (Reuters)

This proposition comes with ethical questions raised about the humanity of this act that turned a person into a commodity that can be bought and sold after his death instead of honoring and burying him.

This phenomenon was criticized for its insult to the human being, and the writer and academic Abdullah Al-Baridi likened it to the Holocaust in which the Nazis insulted the human being and burned him alive, but he called this new phenomenon a description of the "motocost" meaning the burning of the dead.

Al-Baridi indicates that this is a new stage of "creativity" of Western civilization, which it has reached in its dealings with man and material benefit from him even after his death.

The church is easing restrictions

Although the Western Church throughout the past centuries prohibited the burning of corpses as contradicting the teachings of the resurrection on the Day of Resurrection, it eased restrictions a lot in the past decades, and began to allow the burning of bodies in 1963.

And in October of 2016, the Vatican said in a document that it preferred burying the bodies of the dead rather than burning them, but recommended keeping the ashes of the bodies being cremated in a "sacred place" and not keeping them at home, dividing them among family members, or scattering them in the air.

And the document stated that in the event of choosing to cremate the body, "the ashes of the deceased must be placed in a sacred place such as a cemetery, in special vaults, in a church, or in a place designated for that."

She added, "It is not allowed to scatter the ashes of the deceased in the air, on the ground, in the sea, or in any other way, or to keep them in souvenirs, pieces of jewelry, or the like."

As for Islam, the principle is that it is not permissible to burn the body of the dead because it has sanctity like the sanctity of the living. The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “Breaking the bone of the dead is like breaking it alive.” dirt.