Ali Albarghouthi – Life in the Grave – What Happens after Death
AI: Summary ©
The concept of death is a punishment, not a trial, and the body is the barrier between life and death. The presence of death experiences can be monitored through observation, and near death experiences can be monitored through observation. The punishment of death is revealed through the body, and the presence of death experiences can be seen through various methods. The punishment of death is a partial separation, and the presence of the dead is important for protecting from punishment and inspection of graven. The importance of fasting, praising the presence of the lord, and learning the truth is emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
So what comes
after death
is the grave
or more generally
the Aalamul Barzakh,
the state of Al Barzakh.
And
what we want to know inshallah by the
end of this lecture among other things is
what do we mean by when we say
Al Barzakh?
What does it refer to?
How is it similar
and different
from this
worldly life, the duniya
and the akhira?
So what does it share with them and
how is it different from them?
What is
fitnatulqabr,
the trial of the grave? What is it
if someone were to ask you?
What are the blessings
and the punishments in the grave?
Do the people in the grave
can they communicate
with the living?
Can the living communicate with the people of
their grave?
Do they hear us? Do they know what's
happening to us? These are the
some of the questions that I would hope
by the end of this lecture inshallah, if
someone were to ask you, you'd be able
to answer. So keep them in mind, inshallah,
because there is
something you're supposed to get from this lecture.
So Al Barzakh
is
something greater than the grave.
So it's mentioned in the Quran.
Allah Azzawajal said when death
comes to one of them,
they will say, You Allah, send me back.
What will they say? You Allah,
send me back. Why?
Perhaps I can do something good in the
life that I've left.
So scholars say he does not wish to
go back to earn more money
or to be famous,
to do anything in this life,
meaning it misses nothing in this life
except doing good. That's the thing. Just send
me back
That's my only regret. Send me back
so I can do something good. Then Allah
said no.
He says no. This is just a word
that he's saying.
Right?
That is
if Allah
gave you all the reminders that you need
to see
and all the chances you need to have.
And after all of this,
all the signs,
then when you're about to die on where
you are or when you're
dead, they say send me back so I
can do it differently.
Allah said no,
because you're just simply gonna go back to
what you're used to do.
It's like a person in this dunya
who proclaims regret. I wish I could have
done something differently in my youth
or when I was strong or when I
was rich,
but is it sincere
if Allah were to send you back with
you something different or just simply a regret?
And
then Allah
And then in front of them is a
till the day where they will be resurrected.
Meaning the language, a barrier between 2 things
that separates them.
So Allah says in another,
between
2 bodies of water is a barrier. They
don't transgress.
That's what a barzakh means.
So a barzakh
is greater
than the grave
Because the common question
that someone sometimes you're asked, it says, what
if a person
is not buried?
Will he be questioned?
Because the question in one's mind is suaalulqabr,
the question in the grave. What if someone
is cremated?
Will he be punished?
So he's saying we call it the punishment
or the trial of the grave because it
most commonly happens where?
In the grave. But if someone is cremated,
it still
is questioned and is still
punished or blessed
because it's on the soul connected to whatever
is or remains of the body.
So it doesn't matter you're never gonna escape
it whether you are buried
or in the belly of an animal or
you've been burned,
Right? So the barzakh is bigger.
Does that make sense?
Okay. So promise me none of you is
going to ask me that question again.
Okay.
So
you've heard the sheikh
talk about the soul, it being extracted from
the body.
If it's righteous, it gets
elevated and carried
to the heavens, one after the other,
and then it will be sent to the
grave.
We've heard that from him, so I'm gonna
pick up from where he left.
Before it's in the grave,
when you're carrying
the body
on the shoulders
to be taken
to the cemetery.
The Prophet
said, when it's being carried on the shoulders
of men,
If it's righteous, it will say,
put me forward, take me forward quickly
to be buried.
And if it's not righteous, it will say
misery to me or woe to me,
where are you taking me?
So it knows where it's going. So you
know when you pray Janazah on
a body
and then you carry it,
the soul
has consciousness of what is happening.
It's around.
And by the way, yeah, one of the
things that I wanted to ask
or wanted us to know about is near
death experiences and how that is related to
the Barzakh
and our ability, I mentioned, our ability to
communicate with the dead. Right?
So can we conjure up spirits and ask
them questions? So I hope you'll also be
able to answer that question.
So anyway, so the soul has consciousness
when it's being carried
on the shoulders of men and what is
going to happen to it. So there's an
awareness,
right? It knows
And then when you take that body and
you bury it,
as some of the sahaba
said
if
I remember right he said, And even if
you bury me,
wait
next
to the grave,
next to my grave.
As long as it takes to slaughter a
camel
and cut up and dispute the meat.
So about 20 minutes.
Until
what? Until I see what I will reply
to the messengers of Allah, Azzawal, and so
that you give me comfort with your presence.
And the prophet alaihis salatu wasalam said after
body.
So he's down there.
The soul is down there with the body
and they are conscious and aware of what
is happening on top.
He hears the people around. He knows who
is there, and he say,
don't rush and leave.
Why? What's happening?
The person is being, what,
questioned and asked.
Okay?
So give me comfort with your presence, and
the prophet said,
He says, Ask
forgiveness
and steadfastness
for your brother because now he's being questioned.
Now,
so that tells you as soon as you
bury the person and you finish the barrier,
all of it,
you wait for about 20 minutes because at
that time they're being questioned.
Right then,
they're being questioned.
Okay.
Now
anything that is going to happen
to us
after our death
can only be known through news from Allah
as the wajan and His Prophet, alaihis salatu
was
In other words, it's inaccessible
through reason
and experience,
through reason and the senses.
Were you to open a grave and monitor
what is happening to that person, you will
not see any of this.
If you were to put a camera with
him
for
days months years, you would not see any
of it.
So this is inaccessible,
so there is no room for a person
to know what is gonna happen except through
Allah's revelation.
So this is from As Samayat.
Reason has no part to play in understanding
what happens there.
You wouldn't know about it unless Allah
told you and Allah told you. So that's
the only way that we know.
So the first thing that a person experiences
in the grave and if he is not
buried
wherever he may be, the soul comes back
but goes up first, right?
And then it comes back to the grave.
The first thing is that there is the
contraction of the grave.
The grave, whether you are a believer or
non believer, a Muslim, whatever you may be,
the grave will contract
and then expand.
That contraction, wallahu alam, is softer on the
believers,
not so on the non believers.
And the Prophet said:
He says if a person were to survive
or escape that contraction of the grave, Sa'd
would have escaped it, but he did not.
So that's the first thing that happened, a
contraction
and then it expands back.
Then 2 angels descend,
and what are the names of those angels?
What are their names?
Exactly. Munkar and Nakir.
Now do you know why they're called Munkar
and Nakeer?
Because they're frightful,
right?
They're frightening.
It's not a usual sight.
They are stern
and they are harsh
and they will yell at you.
Okay?
That's a fitna.
So the prophet, alaihi, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, said
in the hadith,
Okay,
and it was revealed to me that you
are you will be tested in the grave
of fitna
close to the fitna of Dajjal.
You know that the Dajjal is the greatest
fitna on earth,
right?
We said
the fitna in the grave
is close to the fitna, not exactly. He
said
close to the fitna of
because
will come
and will ask this person,
and this is the believer.
He says,
who's your
rub? He says, Rabbi Allah. Allah is my
rub.
He says, Madinuk,
what is your religion? He says, my religion
is Islam.
He says,
What did you say about that man?
So he knows. He says, Muhammad,
he said, I used to say or I
say he's the prophet
and the messenger of Allah.
He says, wama ilmukh.
He says, how did you know?
He says, qaraatukitaaballahiwasaddaqtuh.
He says, I read the book of Allah
Azzawajal
and I believed it.
That's when they yell at him.
Stern.
That is when the prophet the prophet, sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam said, that is when Allah
said,
Allah
will establish those who have iman
with the established or with the firm saying
in this world and in the next. Meaning
if Allah does not hold you still, you
will
not know what to say. That's the difficulty
because they will yell at him.
And if he is honest,
he'll bring the same answer back.
Whereas the other one,
the disbeliever,
will not know what to say.
They will come and ask him, who is
your rock? Doesn't know. Who is your what
his religion does not know. What is this?
What did he say? Did you what did
he used to say about that man?
He says
he doesn't know who they're talking about. They
say Muhammad.
He said I used to hear people say
something, so I said it.
So there will be a voice coming down
from the sky. He said,
He says, My servant has lied.
Means he's a liar.
Write his book or put his book in
sejeen. And for the believer,
my servant has said the truth.
Write or keep his book in alayeen, in
the highest levels.
Then the Prophet alaihi salallahu alaihi wasallam said,
For the believer,
a portal will be opened between him
and Jannah,
and he will see his place in paradise,
and the angel will tell him, This is
your place in paradise,
and then a portal will be opened between
him and hellfire. And he said, This was
your place in hellfire
if you would not have been a believer,
but Allah saved you from it. This is
your place in Jannah,
and that portal between him and Jannah will
bring him
furnishing from Jannah,
meaning he will have furniture
from Jannah,
and
then
perfume from Jannah,
and clothing from Jannah, and light from Jannah,
and his grave will be expanded as far
as the eye can see,
and will be lit like the moon.
So then the person will then say,
let me go and let my family know.
Let me go so I can tell my
family.
It will be said to him, Be still.
Let me go and tell my kids he's
aware of his family,
how worried they may be about him. Let
me go and let them know, he said,
be still.
And up to some
scholars,
he'll be continuously
shown his place
in paradise
day and night, day and night, so he'd
be increasingly thankful
to Allah
Azzawajal,
and he actually will say,
You Allah, bring the day of judgment,
because he or she knows what's waiting for
him. You Allah,
bring the day of judgment.
But the other person, the disbeliever,
a portal between him and heaven will open,
and the angel will say,
This would have been your place in paradise,
have you believed, but you've lost it.
And then a portal between Him
and hellfire will open,
and then some of its fire will enter
His grave,
some of its smoke will enter its grave,
some of its punishment will enter His grave,
and then
the grave will contract
so much
that it rips with crush into each other.
And we'll talk about some of the
punishment that awaits
people in the grave.
That's the contrast between the two.
Were you to open the grave of this
person or that person, you probably would not
see a thing.
You would not be able to detect that
with your eyes, but we believe in it
as the prophet
said so, and in fact, the scholars have
said it is mutawatir.
It is abundantly
certain
through the Quran and through the sunnah of
the Prophet
that the punishment of the grave and the
trial of the grave is true,
and that is why the prophet
you'll find it among his dua
that he would seek, and he would urge
people to seek Allah's
protection from fitna.
You Allah protect me from the fitna,
the trial of the cup,
the grave, and the punishment of the grave,
which means that both of them are true
and both of them need to be in
our du'a.
What would
explain to you the importance
of the grave
is that Uthman
when he would visit the cemetery, he would
cry so much that he would wet his
beard.
So they say
or they asked him, it says when the
day of judgment is mentioned, you don't cry
as much but when the grave is mentioned
or in the cemetery,
you cry so much. He says, Why is
that the case?
He said, He says, The grave is the
first station of the akhira.
If it goes well, what's after it is
easier
than it, and if it doesn't, what's after
it is more difficult than it.
So that is the first station of the
stations of the akhirah.
It
is predictive of what's going to happen later.
So if a person survives this and is
blessed, what comes later is only better and
better. And if it doesn't survive it, then
what comes later could be worse and worse.
Now the Prophet
also told us
that it doesn't stop there. So let's
tackle the believer first and then go to
the non believers. It doesn't stop there.
He said,
He says, The soul of the believer
is a bird
is or like plants or perches
on the trees of paradise.
So after all this, after everything that we've
talked about and the blessings that Allah Azzawajal
had told us about in the grave for
the believer, it doesn't just end there.
As the body decays,
and it doesn't all decay,
the last part
of his spine.
The Prophet
he said that part of the bone does
not decay,
and it is from that that the rest
of the body Allah Azzajal sends rain on
the day of judgment for resurrection.
But as the body
starts decaying,
the soul of the believer
starts having greater attachment
to Jannah.
So he said, alaihis salatu wasallam, that the
soul of the believer is a bird.
The soul is a bird. Where is this
bird?
Perching or sitting
on a tree in Jannah, meaning inside Jannah.
Inside
Jannah. The soul of the shahid has an
added advantage.
The soul of the shahid
is inside
a green bird, as He said, alaihis salatu
wasallam, that flies
wherever it wants in Jannah.
So that's the added advantage for the shahid
because the soul of the believer
is sitting on the tree.
The soul of the mother does what?
Lies around,
right?
So that tells you that people will have
entry into jannah or a particular type of
entry,
a soul entry into jannah,
if they are believers,
and they will eat from
the body that they are housed in. They
will eat from the fruits of Jannah
during that time of barzakh
until Allah Azzawajal
ends all of this
and allows everybody to be resurrected and put
into their bodies.
That's what happens with the believers.
What happens with the non believer
and the hadith continues,
so he said the grave will contract
until it crushes his
bones,
and then he said also, Sada alaihi sallallahu
alaihi wasallam in another hadith,
Then
a being
could be an angel, it doesn't say, but
a being
who is blind, deaf, and mute,
who carries a hammer with him,
and that's authentic.
He said if he were to hit a
mountain with this, the mountain will turn into
dust.
So he takes this hammer and he hits
him with it and he turns into dust.
Then he is brought back to life
and he hits him again with it and
he screams
so loud
that everything hears it except the ins and
the jinn, except humans and the jinn.
Everything hears it except the ins and the
jinn. And the Prophet
on a couple of occasions he would be
passing by graves
and he would say, can you hear? And
they said, no. What is it? He says
the screams of people in the grave.
I could ask Allah Azzawajal, and He could
have you hear it.
So we can't hear it.
But when you walk by a cemetery,
there could be people inside there being blessed,
next beside people who are being punished, and
they don't affect each other.
The Prophet alaihis salam could hear that.
He also said among the punishment that is
there in the grave,
he said, alaihis salatu wa sallam, what he
called in some hadith,
In the modern Arabic, you would translate this
as a dragon, but what is explained in
the hadith is a snake or multi headed
snake
that bites him,
and that's part of the punishment that Allah
has for people there, in addition to other
things that we were not told about and
we do not know.
So
that's what's happening to these believers. This is
what is happening to the believers.
Is the punishment
in the grave
continuous till the day of judgment? I mean
does it continue till the day of judgment
or can it stop?
Scholars have said depends on the sin.
Some people will be blessed
until
they are resurrected.
Some people will be punished
all the way until their resurrection, meaning continuous.
It doesn't stop.
And some people will only be punished
so much as they have sinned,
insomuch as they have sinned. And once the
punishment is done
because the sin is over, they'll be blessed
after.
So they have a time of when they
are punished and a time when they will
be blessed after, depending on the sin.
And the Prophet
in the hadith that you probably know,
he was passing by a grave, and he
2 of them,
and he said,
He said, they are being punished, and they're
not being punished for something that is big.
And then he said, but it is big.
As for one of them,
he would carry
or divulge people's secrets or backbite, tail bearing.
He's accused of that. He's guilty of that.
He's being punished because of this in the
grave. And as for the other, he would
not cleanse himself
from urine
or conceal himself when he's urinating.
So one of the reasons for a punishment
is the grave is
backbiting.
Do we do that?
Yeah.
So is that a major sin?
Uh-huh. So if you don't want to be
punished in the grave,
don't do it.
It's not worth
it. And also purify yourself from urine,
right? Cleanse yourself from it.
Right?
So
if a person is being punished
and another is being blessed,
Is there an ability?
Can we communicate with them? Can we connect
with them?
Do they hear us
if we are around them in the cemetery,
if we speak to them?
First of all,
the dead are occupied.
They're either being blessed or they're either being
punished.
Some people believe that
that it can leave their graves and they
can roam the earth
on particular days,
on particular occasions,
on particulars,
anniversaries,
on Eid?
Who has that belief? Let's
spruce up the house on Eid because the
dead are gonna visit,
right? Or non Muslims
would believe that.
The right answer to this is that the
dead are not free to roam the earth.
They're not free to roam the heavens
they're occupied,
okay? As we've mentioned, if a person is
being punished, they can't escape that punishment.
And if a person is being blessed, he's
between the grave and heaven,
so they don't go to visit you. They're
not looking down on you. They're not beside
you taking care of you. And by the
way, when a person loses a loved one
that is a very emotional and vulnerable time,
very vulnerable time.
So a lot of us could tend to
believe that the dead are around us because
it's comforting,
or they're looking out for us, or they
know what is happening to us. It's very
reassuring to know that my dad is right
next to me, will take care of me.
He's watching over me. He's wishing me the
best.
No, the dead are not are separated from
what is happening to us. The evidence of
this
is that we have some hadith and some
atha of the Prophet
that when a new person dies,
he is received by the dead
and they want to ask him questions.
Then
then others will tell him, Come on, give
him some break he has just been through
a lot.
Then they will ask him, What happened to
so and so? Did she marry? What happened
to so and so? What happened to this
and that?
So they will only get through their news
through the newcomers.
And if He had said,
Oh, He died before me. Did you not
see Him?
They'll say, Oh God,
He had gone to *.
Meaning if they are righteous,
they will have an opportunity to meet new
dead people,
And if they come, they'll ask them, What
happened to this? What happened to this? What
happened? They don't know what's happening in the
dunya unless people tell them.
And if you were to say, But so
and so died before me, did he not
come? Or if he did not come here,
he went somewhere else,
not to us.
So they have no knowledge of what is
happening in the dunya unless they are told.
Right?
Now
can we talk to them?
Can we conjure up the dead?
What if you pass by a person who's
a psychic
and tells you, I can see your father
and your mother right next to you and
they're telling me X, Y, and Z about
you, and it's accurate
it's really accurate.
They call you by the pet name that
the only they could call you.
And you say to yourself, maybe
it is my father right next to me.
It is my father mother right next to
me. Is that true?
Who's right next to you?
The jinn
who knows all of these details.
Not your parents.
So we don't have direct communication with the
dead. We can't have a seance,
a conjuring of the dead. We can say,
Let's bring on the spirits, tell me, and
that they will talk to you and you
talk to them. That's not true. All that
is nonsense.
But there's a way
where you can talk to the dead and
the dead can talk to you.
What is that?
In what?
Come on, it's fine, even if it's wrong.
In what?
Du'a? Well, I mean, I mean if you
make du'a to them, so
a person will have a particular
station in Jannah
and then he will be elevated, raised up,
and he says, You Allah, Azzojal,
by what did I deserve this elevation? He
says, because of the dua of your child.
So he will know that my child gave
me this and that, did this and that
to me, for me, that elevated me. So
in a sense you could call that communication.
There's another way.
Dreams.
Dreams,
right?
So in a dream, Allah says,
Allah Allah Azzawajal, right, takes the soul of
those people who sleep
and those who
are dead.
That
He takes the souls of both.
So sleep is a minor death.
It resembles death,
where the soul
separates not completely but partially from the body.
In death, it separates completely
still is connected but suction.
For sleep, it's a partial separation,
and in that the souls can meet.
The souls can meet in the realm that
Allah knows about. They can meet.
So you could see the Prophet alaihis salatu
wasalam and your vision could be true.
You could see your mother and your father.
You could see any dead scholar. That's always
a possibility,
and that could be a true genuine dream.
The question here is it always true?
No.
So
a dream could be a fantasy,
something you wanted to see and you saw
it. So you see your mother, you see
your father, but they're not really your mother
and your father. It's just images in your
head of things that are inside of you.
It could be that what you've seen
is the trickery of the devil,
the plot of the devil.
So it's not true
or it could be that you had seen
is one of them indeed.
How do you
know? By the content.
By the content. If the content
is authentic, the content is
agreeable with the Quran and the sunnah,
does not contradict them.
There's nothing haram in it, nothing doubtful about
it,
and it has in it signs that the
one who is talking to you is in
fact that person,
then you've seen them, Wallahu 'alam.
So they had visions or they had dreams
of the scholars of Islam before. They would
see Ibn Mubarak, they will see Athouri, they
will see Ahmed
and so on and so on and so
on. They'll see these scholars and they'll ask
him, what did the Allah do with you?
I see Allah forgave me. Why did He
forgive you? Because of this, because of this,
because of that. So they could see the
scholars and on top of all of that
they could see the prophet Muhammad
alaihis salatu
wasalam.
Right? So it's indeed you could see
those people, and there is this intersection
between those who are asleep and the
world of Al Barzah.
Now
near death experiences,
do you know what that is?
Right?
When a person
it's reversible death. You're clinically dead but you
come back to life.
And so some people
say that what they've seen is their spirits
hovering above their bodies
and they have visions.
It's a black tunnel at the end of
it, there is light
or they see their parents
and they
could be just a hallucination, something that you
saw, a dream, a really vivid dream but
it's just a dream.
Or it could be the seitan playing with
you, right?
In a very
weak state when your soul is kind of
struggling,
maybe the shaitan is playing with you, or
maybe you saw something that is real,
but we can neither confirm nor deny it's
part of the barzakh.
What we know is what the Prophet, alaihis
salatu wa sallam said,
so we don't have to investigate
those phenomenons
and put a lot of credence in them.
What we have is enough from Him, alayhis
salatu wa sallam.
And that is the state of Al Barzakh
that will continue, and as I said, it's
predictive of what's gonna happen
later on.
So what do you want to take from
it? And maybe before I
leave,
some of the things that will protect you
from
the punishment in the grave,
and that is not exhaustive
but some other
things. So the prophet alaihe wa sallam, he
said in the beginning, that's what the believer
when the angel wants to come to him,
the salah would be at his head,
the deceased.
So the salah will say you can't come
from here.
Fasting will be on the right. Fasting will
say not from this side. Zakah will be
on the left. Zakat, he said not from
my side.
And then the rest of righteous deeds will
be next to His feet. So they say,
Not from My side.
So that protects him.
And then the angel will set him up
and ask him these questions, but
initially,
he wants to come in from this side,
this side, that side, and that side. He's
protected all over because
of his good deeds. So salah,
zakah,
fasting,
and then salatul Rahim, sadaqa, and all righteousness.
So if you do this,
it protects you.
He said also, alaihis salatu wasalam, there's a
surah in the Quran that has 30 aya's,
it is the protection
from the punishment in the grave, and that
surah is what?
Mulk.
So the Prophet
would recite it every night.
So if you could recite it every night,
eventually you'll memorize it, and if you memorize
it and you make it a habit, by
the will of Allah
will protect you from the punishment in the
grave. The shahid is protected from
the trial and the punishment in the grave.
The person who dies
on the day or night of Friday is
protected from the punishment
and the trial of the grave. So it's
an honor to die on a Friday,
right?
So
that's why I have and again, that's not
exhaustive,
but before I leave you, Insha'Allah, I just
want to give you an opportunity to ask
a couple of questions,
related, Insha'Allah, to the topic.
So I'll give Insha'Allah the chance for the
next speaker.
I don't know whom whoever. Go ahead, please.
How long will it feel like?
So how long the duration? How long does
it feel like?
We don't have an accurate sense of how
long will it feel like. He reminded me
there was something I wanted to mention.
There's a hadith in the Prophet about
Panu Israel,
and
and he said He says narrate from the
children of Israel because they've experienced wondrous things.
He says there were a group of people
who said to themselves from Banu Israel,
let's pray to Allah azza wa Jal that
He would bring us back a person from
the dead so so we can ask him
questions.
So they went and they prayed
and they waited
in the cemetery,
and then somebody actually rose from the dead,
and he was black skinned, and there had
a trace of salah on his forehead,
and that's from Banu Israel, from the Israelites,
so that you understand they prayed also.
Not something similar to their prayer today, something
similar to our salah.
So
he said, he says, Why did you ask
for me to be brought back to life?
I've died a 100 years ago and only
now did that heat of death leave me.
Pray that I would go back.
And then he went back.
So
he died a 100 years ago and only
then would that heat that he experienced during
death depart him.
So they don't experience or we don't experience
time as we experience it here.
Longer,
shorter, Allah knows, but it's not the same.
Does that answer your question? Insha'Allah.
There was one here.
How does it help and elevate?
So the greater good that you do, the
lesser your punishment will be. So if a
person deserves punishment for whatever reason in the
grave and he does good,
that sadaqa, especially if it's continuous,
will keep combating that punishment until it overcomes
it.
So that is one good thing to have,
which is invest in a sadaqa jariyah that
keeps benefiting you in your graven beyond,
right?
Just like fire,
the fire could be great or could be
small, and you're throwing water on it continuously.
Eventually,
it will extinguish it.
But it depends how big the fire is
and how much water you're throwing at it.
Okay. Inshallah. I just wanna take 2 more,
Insha'Allah. I don't want to do the sisters
a disservice.
Okay.
Let me answer this one and if you
cannot think of the next one, Insha'Allah, I'll
answer it. So that's also another good question,
insha'Allah.
The evidence we have is the question is
about whether the dead hear us and about
when we visit the grave, do we recite
Quran
to benefit them, and they will know
or be aware of our presence.
So first of all, we only have evidence
or,
explicit evidence that they know what is happening
around them at the beginning of the burial.
We have no evidence that they will continuously
know what is happening around them.
So if you adhere strictly to the evidence
here, although there's disagreement of opinion about it,
to be honest,
but if you adhere strictly to the evidence,
you will say that initially they know what
is happening,
eventually they don't.
So you can't just simply go to them
and communicate whatever you want and think that
they will listen,
or they know. Even when you go to
Muhammad
all the way in Madinah
and you pass by and you say, Assalamu
alaikum Rasulullah,
Assalamu alaikum, Assalamu alaikum, Assalamu alaikum, Assalamu alaikum
Umar, The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam does
not know your greeting of salam except through
an angel.
Right?
It's not that he hears you, he knows
it through an angel who tells him so
and so said salaam. And so whether you
are here in Toronto or over there in
Medina when you say salam of the prophet,
the medium is the same. It goes through
the same process.
So when you go to a grave, you
think I'm gonna talk to them and they
will hear and understand what I'm saying to
them. That's not the case.
Also, it's not the sunnah to go to
the grave and recite the Quran.
The sunnah is to say
That's the greeting that you have. It's a
dua, but there's no, evidence that the prophet
either
did or recommended the reading of the Quran
in the cemetery or said that this is
beneficial.
Right? So if you want to do it,
if you're among a group who thinks that,
and there are scholars who do believe that,
if you read Quran and give it as
a gift to the dead, it benefits them,
you can give it at home.
But you don't do it in the cemetery.
That becomes a biddah.
I
should probably conclude.