A post circulating on X claims that Japan is hostile to Islamic burial practices and that these practices are effectively banned. The claim is not entirely accurate. However, Islamic burial customs indeed face significant constraints in Japan. The post frames the issue as a suppression of religious liberty. My contribution to these threads—posed as a rhetorical question—is whether there are legitimate limits on religious freedom. Of course there are. However, before explaining why, I would like to outline Islamic burial traditions and the current situation in Japan.
Islamic tradition requires burial. It strongly prefers that the deceased be buried as soon as possible—ideally within 24 hours and traditionally before sunset if death occurs earlier in the day. Embalming is generally strongly discouraged or outright prohibited, and cremation is strictly forbidden. In Japan, however, cremation is the overwhelmingly dominant practice (99.8 percent of corpses are cremated).
A small number of Japanese cemeteries accept Muslim burials, but they are few, often far from major Muslim enclaves, and sometimes prohibitively difficult or expensive to access. When local Muslim groups attempt to establish new cemeteries, they frequently encounter strong local resistance based on concerns about cultural identity, groundwater contamination, and property values. As a result, proposed cemeteries are routinely canceled.
The issue, then, is less one of explicit state prohibition than of de facto exclusion resulting from administrative hurdles, community opposition, and cultural norms. In practical terms, Muslims in Japan face significant obstacles to securing a burial that aligns with their faith—an ongoing problem (for them, at least) even without a formal national ban.
My rhetorical question to posters is whether they believe it would constitute an infringement of religious liberty for Japan (or countries most anywhere in the world, for that matter) to prohibit funerary practices involving endocannibalism—anthropologists’ term for the ritual consumption of members of one’s own community as part of mortuary rites. Such practices were not acts of hostility but expressions of cosmological belief, mourning, and reverence for the dead.
This is not a theoretical scenario. Various societies around the world have incorporated ritual cannibalism into their treatment of the dead, viewing it as a compassionate means of honoring the deceased, maintaining spiritual continuity, and strengthening social solidarity.
As an anthropology minor, I took an entire course on cannibalism taught by Dr. Marilyn Wells, whose fieldwork spanned Central America, East and West Africa, and Papua New Guinea. Her lectures and course materials were fascinating. When we reached the topic of endocannibalism in funerary rites, I remember clearly thinking about multiculturalism and whether Western nations should tolerate the practice in the name of religious liberty. Cannibalism is often my go-to example when testing the limits of religious freedom.
One of the best-known examples is the Fore people of Papua New Guinea, who practiced funerary cannibalism into the mid–twentieth century. For the Fore, consuming parts of the deceased preserved the person’s auma—spiritual life force—within the kin group. The auma, the source of vitality, contrasted with the aona, the physical body. Endocannibalism was the consumption of corpses, not the living, and served to protect the community from the kwela, a dangerous spirit believed to linger after death. The practice was eventually suppressed after researchers linked it to kuru, a fatal prion disease.
Concerns about groundwater contamination associated with burial—including those linked to specific Muslim burial methods—are entirely rational, and Japan is within its rights to impose restrictions for public health reasons. But more is at stake. The Japanese have the right to preserve their cultural practices within their own country—a right one might expect cultural relativists to defend.
Yet, within contemporary progressive discourse, the cultural norms of advanced societies such as European and East Asian nations are often treated with contempt and deemed unworthy of protection. Meanwhile, primitive cultures are presumed to possess an absolute right to preserve their traditions, even when doing so imposes significant burdens on the host society. Resistance to extreme and primitive religious practices is thus framed as a violation of the very religious liberties to which advanced populations are expected to subscribe.
The Fore are not the only example. The Wari’ of the Brazilian Amazon also practiced funerary cannibalism. For them, consuming the dead was the most respectful mortuary practice; in contrast to Muslims, burial was considered degrading and emotionally harmful. Anthropologist Beth Conklin has written extensively about how Wari’ mortuary cannibalism expressed compassion, reinforced emotional bonds, and strengthened solidarity among survivors.
Various Melanesian groups likewise practiced funerary cannibalism, often as part of cosmological frameworks that guided the spirit of the dead or preserved aspects of their essence within the lineage. In the Amazon Basin, groups such as the Amahuaca and neighboring peoples consumed parts of the body during mourning rituals. Certain indigenous Australian groups historically ingested charred bone powder as a way of symbolically incorporating the spirit of the deceased.
A recurring theme in my cannibalism course, and more broadly the anthropological and sociological curricula, I can accurately convey the cultural relativists’ viewpoints: although foreign or unsettling to outsiders, these practices are deeply meaningful to those cultures where they appear. If one asks why this should matter, this is the right question. Moreover, why should cultural relativism be anything more than an epistemological problem and methodological approach? It does not follow that it should also be a moral standpoint.
Ultimately, the question comes down to this: Why should the practices of foreign cultures impose burdens on host countries? What moral obligation does a society have to tolerate religious rituals that are profoundly alien to its own traditions—especially when these practices compromise social cohesion, disrupt cultural norms, and threaten public health? While religious liberty is a vital principle, it is not absolute. Host societies have every right—and indeed, a responsibility—to set reasonable limits that protect the culture, values, and welfare of their citizens.
Moreover, tolerance must be reciprocal: just as outsiders should respect the laws and norms of the countries they inhabit, host nations are justified in shaping the boundaries of acceptable practice, particularly when the stakes involve both public safety and the preservation of cultural integrity.
If foreign culture-bearers wish to continue their traditional practices, then they need not enter those countries that do not tolerate extreme or primitive rituals. They can stay where they are. We should prefer that they do. And if they are not allowed to practice their rituals where they are, for example, because their people have been integrated into another superior, more advanced group, then the following generations can thank those who stopped them.
freedom and reason 