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Is the martyr's body forbidden to the worms of the earth, and if so, why do the bodies of martyrs in Palestine decompose?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

There is no text in the Book (Quran) or the Sunnah that prohibits the bodies of martyrs from decaying in the earth; rather, it is mentioned that the bodies of prophets are forbidden to the earth. Martyrs are alive with their Lord, and their souls are in the crops of green birds, but this does not mean that their bodies do not decay, for the life of the Barzakh (interim period) differs from the life of this world. The bodies of some martyrs may remain intact as a grace from Allah. Martyrdom is a matter of the unseen, and we judge only by what is apparent, and only Allah knows the inner realities of things. There is no legal (Shar'i) correlation between martyrdom and the non-alteration of the body.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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