Ebrahim Moosa – Radio Islam News | 16 November 2018

Janazah prayers in absentia are being performed for slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Makkah and Madinah today.

Salah Khashoggi, son of murdered Washington Post columnist, said on Twitter the prayer will be performed in Madinah following the Fajr prayer, and in Makkah following the Jummuah prayer.

Salah said earlier that condolences for his father will be accepted from Friday to Sunday at the Khashoggi home in Jeddah.

It has been confirmed that a Janazah Salaah in Masjid Nabawi which was coupled with an announcement that it was for a “mayyitil ghaaib” (deceased in absentia) did take place this morning. The same is expected to occur after Jummuah in Makkah.

Funeral prayers in absentia have also been occurring in Turkey and the United States.

Khashoggi, a frequent contributor to The Washington Post, was killed Oct. 2 inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

After weeks of denying any involvement in the crime, Saudi Arabia later admitted that Khashoggi had been killed inside the consulate but claimed that rogue elements overstepped the official brief which was merely to persuade Khashoggi to return to the Kingdom.

His body has yet to be returned to his family, which has been requesting it, amid reports that it was chemically dissolved, following its dismemberment.

Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee Hatice Cengiz called on Sunday for Muslims across the world to conduct funeral prayers for the murdered journalist this Friday.

Cengiz especially called for the Janazah prayer to be carried out in the Prophet’s Mosque in the Saudi city of Medina, Khashoggi’s home city.

I call upon Muslims across the world to perform Janazah prayer, Salat Alghaib, on my beloved #Jamal_khashoggi in all mosques, especially the Prophet mosque in Madeenah,after prayer this coming Friday 16 November. May Allah (swt) accepts him in Alfirdaws of paradise #JamalKhasoggi

— Hatice Cengiz / خديجة (@mercan_resifi) November 11, 2018

It was a long-standing wish of Khashoggi that he be buried alongside relatives in Madinah’s Baqi cemetery.

As per an announcement Thursday, Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor is now seeking the death penalty for five out of 11 of what a reclusive regime investigation determined as suspects charged in the murder of Khashoggi.

According the Saudi account, Khashoggi was killed in the country’s Istanbul consulate on Oct. 2 by a lethal injection after a struggle, and his body was dismembered and taken out of the building, Shalaan Al-Shalaan, deputy public prosecutor and spokesman, told reporters in Riyadh on Thursday.

Khashoggi’s body parts, it is claimed, were then handed over to a local Turkish agent outside the consulate grounds.

Writing on Middle East Eye on Wednesday, Professor Mohammad Fadel characterised the Saudi failure to facilitate a proper burial for Khashoggi as a sin against Islam.

“By first murdering Jamal Khashoggi, and then either hiding the body or destroying it, his killers added to their crime of murder the crime of violating the deceased’s right to an honorable Muslim burial,” he said.

“It may very well be that Mohammed bin Salman views Jamal Khashoggi…as a despicable rebel whose defiance earned him the most severe penalty imaginable: absolute symbolic banishment from the community.

“In Islam, however, even the brigand, whose executed body would be on display in the Middle Ages as a deterrent to others, had to be given a proper Muslim burial. Only the apostate does not have the right to be buried as a Muslim, but not even Mohammed bin Salman has dared to level that accusation at Khashoggi.”