As-salaamu alaikum,

Insha'Allah, I wanted to know if someone could provide me with some authentic information on why Muslims don't use embalming fluid and if we use caskets.

SubhanAllah, my father (non-Muslim) once mentioned that there was a Muslim funeral in his town at a gym for a Muslimah principal and that, because she was put in a vault, the gym still smelled of the body. He was also informed by a guy associated with the burial that it was because we don't use embalming fluid. Now my dad is asking me why, and I thought it was because it tortured the dead somewhat, but I wasn't sure. I witnessed my first janazah (funeral) a little while after I became Muslim. It was for my ex-sister-in-law. They carried her in a box casket in the car, but her body was put in the ground with no box (may Allah forgive me if I'm wrong) in a Muslim cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia. I told him I could only tell him what I knew, but that I would find out for him as this has always been a question of mine, and I didn't want to give him any false information. He told me he didn't understand why we didn't use embalming fluid when, to him, it shouldn't do any harm to a body when the soul leaves it or why we wouldn't use a casket when, "back in the day," opossums would dig up the dead bodies and try to eat them, so people started using pine caskets. Please help me; this is a good opportunity for me to learn and also for my family to learn things about Islam since I'm the only Muslimah. Again, for people who don't know, most southerners or Southern Baptist families tend to think a family member who has converted to Islam has gotten themselves into something they don't know about, even though it's their families who are ignorant and not open to learning.

Jazak Allah khairan for any help you all can give me, and may Allah make my explanation easy.

The reason that the body is put in the grave without the casket is that, in Islam, the funeral procedure is considered a ritual and a formal obligation upon the Muslim community for which certain rules must be followed in washing, shrouding, performing the funeral prayer over the deceased, and burying the body. Among these rules and Islamic traditions is that the body and its shroud are the only thing to be buried.