The worldwide ‘lockdown’ due to Covid-19 has had an accelerating effect on the ongoing discussion of Islamic burial in the Netherlands. Because of the closure of airspace Moroccan and Turkish-Dutch deceased could no longer be repatriated to be buried in their country of origin. This increased the pressure on cemeteries in the Netherlands to provide for the requirements and rituals of an Islamic burial. And this in turn showed the importance of the discussion that is already taking place in the House of Representatives about changes to the laws and regulations concerning burials. These three dimensions of Islamic burial in the Netherlands – personal, practical and legal – are discussed in this article.

The identified trend of changing family relations and establishing a family without being traditionally married, probably does not apply to the entire Dutch population. Islamic law requires that people get married before children are born. Among Muslims, this standard is still followed on a large scale. Marriages which may be validly established according to Islamic law, however, will not always be recognized in the Netherlands. Examples include the unregistered marriages and polygamous marriages. This has implications for the way in which questions of parentage and custody of children that were born out of these marriages, are answered. In this article it will be argued that the law, where it concerns issues of parentage and custody, provides insufficient protection to the category of those unrecognized Islamic marriages.