The wonders of our time never cease. We have reached levels of vulgarity and commodification unimaginable in the past – to the point where someone who considers himself a ‘merchant of the dead’ markets a grave as if it were a hotel room, offering his clients a ‘five-star cemetery’ as though he’s selling a stay in a luxury resort, not a final resting place for someone who has passed away!
In a video that sparked a wave of anger and condemnation, an Egyptian man appears filming a luxurious cemetery under construction, speaking not to the living but to the dead, saying: “You’ll be lying in a beautiful, classy place. All it takes is payment, and you’ll enter a five-star grave!” It’s a scene that combines vulgarity, commodification of death and moral degradation all in one frame.
Have we really sunk this low in our decline and shamelessness? Has death become a field for class-based pride and tasteless wealth? Are graves now marketed with ‘hotel-like services’, and the deceased addressed with the language of sales and promotional offers?
Really?
What this man did is not just foolish marketing – it is an insult to religion, a desecration of the sanctity of the dead and a blatant violation of Islamic teachings, which call for equality among people in death, and emphasise simplicity, dignity and modesty in the preparation and burial of the deceased.
It is truly unfortunate that such deviant behaviour passes without any accountability, and that some treat the solemn moment of death – which should evoke reflection and humility – as an opportunity for cheap publicity and trending videos.
Whether graves are old or new, spacious or narrow, it is a person’s deeds and the legacy they leave behind that determine their honour or disgrace in the afterlife – not marble tiles or plush seating!
I call on the relevant authorities in sisterly Egypt to take disciplinary action against this individual and others like him – not to suppress freedom of expression, but to protect religious values and preserve the dignity of death from vulgarity and exploitation.
We are in desperate need of a serious societal stand – to restore meaning to the greater values in our lives: the meaning of death, the meaning of humility, the meaning of dignity, and the values that cannot be bought or sold.
Death is not a ‘five-star service’, but an inevitable end in which we meet our Creator, stripped of all worldly appearances – except for our good deeds.
Zuhair A Tawfiqi
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