The Dead from Car Accidents
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Fatwa No. ( 5997 )
All praise is due to Allah alone, and may blessings and peace be upon His Messenger, his family, and his Companions. And to proceed: The Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Ifta has reviewed what was sent to His Eminence the President General from the questioner, the judge of the Arta'wiyyah Court \ Ibrahim ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Wasil . The questioner asked, and the text of his question is: We are presented with some car accidents that result in the death of the driver and passengers. They are torn apart, and their parts become mixed together, making it difficult to distinguish them. Some remains stay in the cars, and it is difficult to remove them. Sometimes a fire breaks out in the cars and the bodies burn. Therefore, we seek your ruling in such cases regarding how to bury them and pray over them, and regarding the parts that remain in the cars: are they buried with the wreckage of the car out of respect for the deceased, given that the car may no longer be usable due to the crash or the fire? Also, if the deceased are foreigners and what remains of them are parts or ashes in bags, and it is possible that their countries request their bodies, please rule on this.
May Allah reward you.
After studying the question, the Committee responded: First: They should all be prayed over after washing what is possible to wash of them and shrouding them. If washing is not possible, they should be given tayammum (dry ablution). If only parts of them remain, the prayer is performed over the remaining parts. Likewise, the burned body is also prayed over. Second: It is obligatory to bury every deceased person in a grave specific to him, and one should strive to distinguish one from the other as much as possible. Third: It is obligatory to extract all the parts of the deceased that remain in the cars, and his parts are buried with him in his grave; they are not buried with the wrecked cars. Fourth: If the awliya (guardians) of the deceased request that his body or what remains of it be sent to his country before burial, they are permitted to do so. However, after burial, they are not permitted to do so. And success is from Allah, and may Allah send blessings and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family, and his Companions.
Source
www.alifta.gov.sa
The Arabic text is copied verbatim from the original source, without any edits.