Death, the Grave and the Afterlife

New to the Qur'an? Start with The Qur'an: What It Is, How It Came Down, and How It Was Kept, then read Muhammad ﷺ: A Life. All articles: Deen: Start Here.

Deen · Belief and practice

Most people who read this will have stood at a graveside. Muslims bury quickly, so the news, the washing, the prayer and the burial can all happen inside a day, and the questions tend to come later: what the dead person is going through now, what the Qur'an actually promises, which of the things said at the funeral are solid and which were only repeated. This page tries to answer those questions with the texts on the table, and then walks through the practical side as it works in New South Wales and Victoria.

The first half is theology: death in the Qur'an, the in-between world called barzakh, the questioning in the grave, the signs of the Hour, resurrection, the scales, the bridge, intercession, the Garden and the Fire, and the two arguments that have never quite gone away, about whether the Fire lasts forever and about who is saved. The second half is what a family actually does: sitting with the dying, washing and shrouding, the funeral prayer, the coroner, the cemetery, the will, the weeks after. Where Sunni and Shia practice differ, both are given, and every hadith carries its grading and who gave it.

Contents

1. The journey at a glance
2. What the Qur'an says about dying
3. Barzakh, the in-between
4. The questioning in the grave
5. The signs of the Hour
6. Resurrection and the gathering
7. The scales and the bridge
8. Intercession
9. The Garden and the Fire
10. The two hard questions
11. Caring for the dying
12. Washing and shrouding
13. The funeral prayer
14. Burial in NSW and Victoria
15. From death to burial: a step-through
16. Wills and inheritance
17. Mourning and remembering
18. Glossary
19. Sources

The journey at a glance

Muslim writers on the afterlife, from al-Ghazālī's book on the remembrance of death in the eleventh century to modern academic surveys, tend to lay it out as a sequence.¹² The order below follows that common outline. Not every step is equally well attested, and the notes say where the details come from.

1. DeathThe soul is taken by the angel of death (32:11). Qur'an.³
2. Barzakh"A barrier behind them until the Day they are resurrected" (23:100). Qur'an.
3. The graveTwo angels question the dead; comfort or punishment follows. Sound hadith in al-Bukhārī and Muslim; supported by the reading of 14:27 and 40:46.
4. The HourPreceded by signs; its time known to God alone (31:34). Qur'an and hadith, with very uneven gradings.
5. The TrumpetBlown once and all die; blown again and they rise (39:68). Qur'an.
6. The gatheringPeople gathered "barefoot, naked and uncircumcised". Hadith in al-Bukhārī.
7. The recordEach receives a book in the right hand or the left (69:19–26). Qur'an.
8. IntercessionOnly by God's permission (2:255, 20:109); the Prophet's great intercession. Qur'an and hadith.
9. The scalesDeeds weighed; "no soul will be wronged in the least" (21:47). Qur'an.
10. The bridgeThe crossing over the Fire, linked by many commentators to 19:71. Details from hadith in al-Bukhārī.
11. The Garden or the FireThe final homes; the long argument about whether the Fire ever ends. Qur'an, hadith and theology.

What the Qur'an says about dying

The Qur'an is blunt about death and oddly gentle about it at the same time. "Every soul will taste death," it says, "and you will only receive your full reward on the Day of Judgment."⁴ The first half is a fact anyone can check. The second half is the whole point: death is where accounts are settled, but it is not where they are paid.

The act of dying is described from the outside, as the people standing around the bed see it. "Why then [are you helpless] when the soul [of a dying person] reaches [their] throat, while you are looking on? And We are nearer to such a person than you, but you cannot see."⁵ It is a hard passage to read if you have sat in a hospital room, because it describes exactly that helplessness, and then tells you that someone else was in the room. The one who takes the soul is named only by function, "the Angel of Death, who is in charge of you".³ The name ʿAzrāʾīl, common in Muslim piety, does not appear in the Qur'an.

What the Qur'an spends most time on is not the moment but the regret that can come with it. The clearest example is the passage that gives this page its technical vocabulary:

حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا جَآءَ أَحَدَهُمُ ٱلْمَوْتُ قَالَ رَبِّ ٱرْجِعُونِ ﴿٩٩﴾ لَعَلِّىٓ أَعْمَلُ صَـٰلِحًۭا فِيمَا تَرَكْتُ ۚ كَلَّآ ۚ إِنَّهَا كَلِمَةٌ هُوَ قَآئِلُهَا ۖ وَمِن وَرَآئِهِم بَرْزَخٌ إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ يُبْعَثُونَ ﴿١٠٠﴾

"When death approaches any of them, they cry, 'My Lord! Let me go back, so I may do good in what I left behind.' Never! It is only a [useless] appeal they make. And there is a barrier behind them until the Day they are resurrected."

Qur'an 23:99–100⁶

Two things are worth noticing. The person asking to go back is not asking for more pleasure; they are asking for another chance to do good. And the answer is not only "no" but a description of where they now are: behind a barrier, waiting.

Barzakh, the in-between

The Arabic word barzakh means a partition or isthmus, something that separates two things while touching both. The Qur'an uses it elsewhere for the invisible line between fresh and salt water. In 23:100 it becomes the name for the state of the dead between death and resurrection, and that is how Muslim theology has used it ever since.²

What happens in the barzakh is mostly left to the hadith, but the Qur'an gives one strong hint. Of Pharaoh's people it says: "they are exposed to the Fire [in their graves] morning and evening. And on the Day the Hour will be established [it will be said], 'Admit Pharaoh's people into the harshest punishment [of Hell].'"⁷ Commentators have long read this as two stages: an exposure now, before the Hour, and a full punishment after it. That is one of the verses usually cited for the reality of the punishment of the grave. The other is 14:27, "Allah makes the believers steadfast with the firm Word [of faith] in this worldly life and the Hereafter", which a narration in al-Bukhārī says was revealed about the questioning in the grave.⁸⁹

So the barzakh is not sleep in the simple sense, even though the Qur'an can speak of the dead rising from their "resting place". Sunni and Shia teaching both describe it as a real state, felt by the soul, in which the life just lived is already beginning to show its weight.²¹⁰

The questioning in the grave

Here the hadith are unusually consistent and unusually strong. Several reports in the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections describe what happens after burial, and they agree on the shape of it.

Anas ibn Mālik reports the Prophet ﷺ as saying that when the dead person is placed in the grave and the people walk away, "he even hears their footsteps". Two angels come, sit him up, and ask: "What did you use to say about this man, Muhammad?" The believer testifies that he is God's servant and messenger. The unbeliever or hypocrite says, "I do not know. I used to say what the people used to say."¹¹ That last answer is worth sitting with. The failure described is not wickedness in the dramatic sense but borrowed belief, saying what everyone said.

Another report in Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ has the Prophet ﷺ riding past some graves in Madina when his mount shied. He asked who was buried there, and then said that if it were not that people would stop burying their dead, he would have asked God to let them hear the punishment of the grave that he could hear. He then told his companions to seek refuge from the punishment of Hell, the punishment of the grave, trials seen and unseen, and the trial of the Dajjāl.¹²

The fullest description is the long hadith of al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib, which is not in al-Bukhārī or Muslim but in Abū Dāwūd, where al-Albānī graded it ṣaḥīḥ. It gives the three questions most Muslims learn as children: "Who is your Lord? What is your religion? Who is this man who was sent among you?" The believer answers; a caller from heaven says he has spoken the truth; the grave is widened and a door to the Garden opened. The unbeliever answers "I do not know" three times, and the grave presses in on him.¹³

The two angels' names, Munkar and Nakīr, are not in the Qur'an and not in the two Ṣaḥīḥs. They come from a narration of Abū Hurayra in al-Tirmidhī, who called it ḥasan gharīb (good, but with a single line of transmission at some point); Darussalam's edition grades it ḥasan.¹⁴ Popular sermons often present the names as if they were Qur'anic. They are not, though the narration is respectable.¹⁵

The Shia account

Twelver Shia teaching accepts the questioning and the two angels, and adds to the content. Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 1022), one of the founders of Shia theology, wrote that the dead are asked about "his Lord, his Prophet, his faith and his Imam". He also held a view that is less often mentioned: that only those who were purely faithful or wholly unbelieving are questioned, while others are left until the Day.¹⁰ The Shia funeral includes a talqīn, a prompting spoken to the dead in the grave, which names God, the Prophet ﷺ, the twelve Imams, Islam, the Qur'an and the Kaʿba, so that the person has the answers fresh.¹⁶

The Sunni schools differ on a spoken talqīn after burial. Al-Shāfiʿī's school recommends it, relying on a report from Abū Umāma in al-Ṭabarānī and on the practice of the people of Syria. The hadith itself is weak: al-Nawawī said so but held it good enough for a devotional practice, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī judged its chain passable (ṣāliḥ), and al-Haythamī said some of its narrators were unknown to him.¹¹²¹¹⁷ The Ḥanbalī position is not the simple dislike it is sometimes said to be. Ibn Qudāma found nothing on it from Aḥmad beyond his remark that he had seen only the people of Syria do it, and recorded that al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā and Abū al-Khaṭṭāb recommended it; al-Mardāwī reports it as recommended by most of the school's jurists, with Ibn Taymiyya calling it merely permissible; and al-Buhūtī's Kashshāf al-qināʿ, the standard later manual, says that most recommended it.^118119120 Sayyid Sābiq's Fiqh al-Sunna, a widely used modern survey, records the Ḥanbalīs as disliking it, which does not match their own manuals.¹¹² He puts the Mālikīs on the same side too, and that is only half right. The Mālikī manuals do prescribe a talqīn, but at the deathbed: al-Dardīr lists prompting the dying with the testimony among the recommended acts, spoken in his hearing rather than telling him "say it", which is the instruction in Muslim's hadith, "Prompt your dying to say: there is no god but Allah".^12212160 On prompting after burial Khalīl's Mukhtaṣar says nothing, as al-Ḥaṭṭāb points out, and the school's scholars went different ways. Al-Tādilī took Ibn Abī Zayd's Risāla to mean there is no prompting after death, al-Nafrāwī records that it is not the practice (ʿamal) of Mālik's school, and Ibn Taymiyya counts "a group of scholars among Mālik's followers" among those who disliked it.^121123124 On the other side, Ibn al-ʿArabī called it recommended and the practice of the people of Medina, and al-Ḥaṭṭāb names al-Qurṭubī, al-Thaʿālibī and Abū Bakr ibn al-Ṭallāʿ ("it is what we choose and practise") as Mālikīs who approved it, while recording the warning that prompting the dead with raised voices, as many people did, is an innovation.¹¹⁷¹²¹ So there is no single Mālikī ruling: the school's standard handbook does not call for it after burial, and a respected line of its scholars did. What is firmly established is the Prophet's ﷺ instruction at the grave: "Ask forgiveness for your brother and ask for him to be made firm, for he is now being questioned." Al-Albānī graded that ṣaḥīḥ.¹⁷ That supplication and the deathbed prompting are common ground; the spoken talqīn after burial rests on the weak Abū Umāma report and on local custom.¹¹⁷¹¹⁸

Who denied it

Belief in the punishment of the grave was not unanimous in the early centuries. Some Muʿtazilī theologians, the rationalist school that dominated Baghdad for part of the ninth century, questioned it, and the defenders of the hadith made affirming it a marker of orthodoxy in their creeds. Smith and Haddad trace this argument in detail.² Today it is affirmed across the Sunni schools of theology and in Twelver Shia teaching.

The signs of the Hour

This is the section where care matters most, because it is where the most confident preaching rests on the thinnest evidence. The Qur'an is clear on one point above all: the time of the Hour is known to God alone. "Indeed, Allah [alone] has the knowledge of the Hour."¹⁸ Anyone who tells you when it will come is claiming what the Prophet ﷺ himself did not claim.

The Qur'an does say that the Hour has signs, and that some have already come.¹⁹ It speaks of Gog and Magog breaking loose and "swarming down from every hill",²⁰ of a beast brought out of the earth,²¹ and of a day when "some of your Lord's major signs" come and faith will no longer benefit a soul that did not believe before.²² Of Jesus it says, "his [second] coming is truly a sign for the Hour", which is the common reading of 43:61, though the pronoun has been read in more than one way.²³

The hadith fill this out, and here the gradings do real work.

• Minor signs, in the hadith of Gabriel. Asked about the Hour's signs, the Prophet ﷺ said: "that the slave-girl will give birth to her mistress", and that "barefooted, destitute goat-herds" will be seen "vying with one another in the construction of magnificent buildings". In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ, as part of one of the best-known hadith in Islam.²⁴
• Ten major signs. Ḥudhayfa ibn Asīd reports a list: the smoke, the Dajjāl, the beast, the sun rising from the west, the descent of Jesus son of Mary, Gog and Magog, three great landslides (in the east, the west and Arabia), and a fire from Yemen driving people to their gathering place. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.²⁵
• The Dajjāl and Jesus. The long hadith of al-Nawwās ibn Samʿān describes the Dajjāl's forty days ("one day like a year, one day like a month, one day like a week"), the descent of Jesus at the white minaret east of Damascus, the Dajjāl's death at the gate of Ludd, and the release of Gog and Magog. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.²⁶
• The Mahdi. The word does not appear in the Qur'an, nor in the collections of al-Bukhārī and Muslim.²⁷ It is in the Sunan: Abū Dāwūd has Ibn Masʿūd's report of a man from the Prophet's family, bearing his name and his father's name, who will fill the earth with justice, graded ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī.²⁸ For Twelver Shia the Mahdi is the twelfth Imam, named in the talqīn quoted above, and belief in him is a necessary part of doctrine; many Sunni theologians have held the belief more loosely.²⁷¹⁶ Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406), who went through the Mahdi reports in his Muqaddima, concluded that "very few are above criticism", though al-Albānī, as noted, graded Ibn Masʿūd's report in Abū Dāwūd sound.¹²⁸

Beyond these, there is a large literature of end-times reports of very mixed quality, and a modern industry that maps them onto current events. It is worth knowing that the solid core is small, and that the Prophet's ﷺ own emphasis, repeatedly, was on the individual's death rather than the world's.

Resurrection and the gathering

The Qur'an argues for resurrection more than it describes it. Much of the Makkan preaching was addressed to people who found the idea absurd, and the Qur'an quotes them: someone picks up an old bone and asks, "Who will give life to decayed bones?" The reply is short. "They will be revived by the One Who produced them the first time, for He has [perfect] knowledge of every created being."²⁹ If you accept that you were made once from nothing, the argument runs, being made again should not be the hard part.

The event itself is announced by the Trumpet. "The Trumpet will be blown and all those in the heavens and all those on the earth will fall dead, except those Allah wills [to spare]. Then it will be blown again and they will rise up at once, looking on [in anticipation]."³⁰ Theologians argued over how many blasts there are, and over the fate of the body in the meantime, but the core, a universal death followed by a universal rising, is not in dispute.

The gathering is described most memorably in a hadith. ʿĀʾisha heard the Prophet ﷺ say that people would be gathered barefoot, naked and uncircumcised, as they were first created. She asked the obvious question, whether men and women would look at one another, and was told that the matter would be too grave for that.³¹ It is a small exchange, but it tells you a great deal about the tone of the Day as the early Muslims imagined it: no one is interested in anyone else.

Each person then receives a record. "As for those given their record in their right hand, they will cry [happily], 'Here everyone! Read my record!'" And those given it in the left: "I wish I had not been given my record, nor known anything of my reckoning!"³² A separate set of hadith describes the Prophet's Pool (al-ḥawḍ), from which his community drinks: "a month's journey" across, its water "whiter than milk", its cups as many as the stars, and whoever drinks from it "will never be thirsty".³³ The Pool is affirmed in both Sunni and Shia creeds.

The scales and the bridge

The scales (al-mīzān) are Qur'anic. "We set up the scales of justice for the Day of Judgment, so no soul will be wronged in the least. And [even] if a deed is the weight of a mustard seed, We will bring it forth."³⁴ The short chapter al-Qāriʿa reduces the whole afterlife to two sentences: "as for those whose scale is heavy [with good deeds], they will be in a life of bliss. And as for those whose scale is light, their home will be the abyss."³⁵ Al-Zalzala makes the same point at the smallest scale: "whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it. And whoever does an atom's weight of evil will see it."³⁶

Whether the scales are literal was a real argument. The Muʿtazila tended to read them as a figure for exact justice; Sunni creeds affirmed actual scales while declining to say what they are like.² The hadith, as often, take the question somewhere more practical. The final hadith in al-Bukhārī's whole collection is about the scales: two short phrases, subḥān Allāh wa-bi-ḥamdih and subḥān Allāh al-ʿaẓīm, are "very light for the tongue, but very heavy in the balance".³⁷ Al-Bukhārī chose to end his book there.

The bridge (al-ṣirāṭ) is not named as such in the Qur'an, but many commentators connect it with a verse that has unsettled readers for centuries: "There is none of you who will not pass over it. [This is] a decree your Lord must fulfill. Then We will deliver those who were devout, leaving the wrongdoers there on their knees."³⁸ The detail comes from a long hadith of Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī in al-Bukhārī. The bridge is "slippery", with clamps and hooks like thorns; people cross "as quickly as the wink of an eye, some others as quick as lightning, a strong wind, fast horses or she-camels". Some cross safely, some are scratched, some fall. The same hadith then turns to mercy: believers are told to bring out of the Fire anyone with faith the weight of a gold dinar in their heart, then half a dinar, then "the weight of an atom".³⁹

That structure, a terrifying crossing followed by a long and repeated rescue, is typical of how the hadith handle the Day. The warnings are real, and so is the insistence that the smallest faith counts.

Intercession

Intercession (shafāʿa) is one of the places where Muslim traditions agree on the principle and differ on the detail. The Qur'an both limits it and allows it. The Throne Verse asks, "Who could possibly intercede with Him without His permission?"⁴⁰ Another verse says no intercession will benefit "except by those granted permission by the Most Compassionate and whose words are agreeable to Him".⁴¹ And of those who never prayed or fed the poor and denied the Day, it says flatly: "the pleas of intercessors will be of no benefit to them."⁴² So intercession is neither a right nor a loophole. It is something God grants.

The great intercession is described in a hadith of Abū Hurayra in al-Bukhārī. On the Day, the people, overwhelmed, go to Adam and ask him to intercede. He declines, mentioning the tree. They go to Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and each declines. Then they come to Muhammad ﷺ, who goes and prostrates beneath the Throne, is told to raise his head and ask, and intercedes for his community.⁴³ In Abū Dāwūd there is a shorter and more startling line, graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī: "My intercession is for those of my community who committed major sins."⁴⁴

Three positions

Sunni. The Prophet ﷺ intercedes on the Day, and so, by God's leave, do other prophets, angels and the righteous, including for believers who committed grave sins and entered the Fire. The Abū Dāwūd hadith and the rescue scenes in al-Bukhārī are the main evidence.⁴⁴³⁹

Muʿtazilī. The Muʿtazila held to what they called "the promise and the threat": God keeps His word in both directions, so a Muslim who dies unrepentant after a grave sin remains in the Fire forever. On that view, intercession can raise the rank of those already saved but cannot bring a grave sinner out.⁴⁵ The hadith just quoted were, in effect, the Sunni reply.

Twelver Shia. Intercession belongs to the Prophet ﷺ, the Imams of his family, and others God permits, and it benefits believers who fell short in practice without defying God. Shia writers are careful to say that asking the Prophet ﷺ or an Imam for intercession is asking God through their standing with Him, not asking them in place of God, and they cite the same verses of permission (19:87, 20:109) that Sunnis cite.⁴⁶

Where Sunni and Shia disagree more sharply is on what may be done now: whether one may ask the Prophet ﷺ or a saint to intercede during this life, at a grave or at a distance. That argument belongs more to the site's pages on the Mawlid and on Salafism than here; on the Day itself the two traditions sound much alike.

The Garden and the Fire

The Qur'an's descriptions of the Garden (al-janna) are concrete and sensuous: gardens beneath which rivers flow, shade, fruit, companions, peace. One verse lists "rivers of fresh water, rivers of milk that never changes in taste, rivers of wine delicious to drink, and rivers of pure honey".⁴⁷ Alongside that is a verse that pulls in the opposite direction: "No soul can imagine what delights are kept in store for them."⁴⁸ A ḥadīth qudsī in al-Bukhārī (a saying the Prophet ﷺ attributes to God, in his own words) makes the same point: "I have prepared for My pious slaves things which have never been seen by an eye, or heard by an ear, or imagined by a human being."⁴⁹ Muslim readers have generally held both at once. The images are real, and they are also the nearest thing language can manage.

Sunni creeds put one reward above all of these: the sight of God. Ṣuhayb reports in Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ that once the people of the Garden have entered it, God will lift the veil, "and of things given to them nothing would be dearer to them than the sight of their Lord"; in a second chain the Prophet ﷺ then recites 10:26, "Those who do good will have the finest reward and [even] more", linking the verse's "more" to that sight.¹²⁹ The long hadith of the bridge opens the same way, with the Companions asking whether they will see their Lord on the Day and being told they will have no more difficulty than in seeing the sun and the moon on a clear night.³⁹ The Muʿtazila and the Twelver Shia deny that God can be seen with the eyes, in this world or the next, and read such texts as vision of the heart or as looking for His reward; al-Shaykh al-Mufīd counted this among the points on which the Imāmīs and the Muʿtazila agreed.¹³⁰ The creed post sets out both readings and the verses each side relies on.

The descriptions of the Fire (al-nār, often called Jahannam) are, if anything, more vivid, and they are meant to be. "Whenever their skin is burnt completely, We will replace it so they will [constantly] taste the punishment."⁵⁰ Few Muslims forget the first time they read that verse.

Between the two, al-Aʿrāf describes people on "the heights" who can see both the Garden and the Fire and have not yet entered the Garden, "but eagerly hope to".⁵¹ Commentators disagreed about who they are; a common view, which Ibn Kathīr reports from the Companion Ḥudhayfa, is that they are people whose good and bad deeds were exactly balanced.¹¹⁴ The verse matters because it shows the Qur'an itself does not treat the population of the afterlife as two neat groups.

The two hard questions

Is the Fire eternal?

The majority position, Sunni and Shia, is that the Garden and the Fire are both everlasting, and that those whose home is the Fire because they rejected God remain there. Believers who enter the Fire for their sins are brought out, as the hadith above describe. That much is widely held.

The difficulty is textual. The Qur'an does describe the people of the Fire as "staying there forever", but in Hūd the phrase is followed by a qualification: "staying there forever, as long as the heavens and the earth will endure, except what your Lord wills. Surely your Lord does what He intends." The next verse says the same of the Garden, "except what your Lord wills", but adds "a [generous] giving, without end".⁵² The Fire gets no such rider. Elsewhere, the wrongdoers remain in Hell "for [endless] ages" (aḥqāban, a plural of a word for a long span of time).⁵³

From these verses and some reports from Companions, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350) argued that the Fire, unlike the Garden, might one day come to an end, because God's mercy outruns His anger. Jon Hoover's study follows Ibn al-Qayyim through several of his books, setting out the arguments on both sides at length and, in places, arguing that the punishment would end. Hoover has also examined a 1990 attempt by ʿAlī al-Ḥarbī to show that both men in fact affirmed the Fire's eternity, which tells you how uncomfortable the question remains in Salafi circles today.⁵⁴ Most scholars, then and now, rejected the idea. It is fair to report that it was held by serious people, and wrong to present it as the mainstream.

Who is saved?

The second question is older and wider. The Qur'an says that God "does not forgive associating others with Him [in worship], but forgives anything else of whoever He wills".⁵⁵ It also tells those who have wronged themselves not to "lose hope in Allah's mercy, for Allah certainly forgives all sins".⁵⁶ It says that "the believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabians, whoever [truly] believes in Allah and the Last Day and does good will have their reward with their Lord",⁵⁷ a verse that commentators have read in several ways, from a statement about those who followed their prophets before Muhammad ﷺ to a broader promise. And it lays down a principle of justice: God does not punish a people until a messenger has been sent to warn them.⁵⁸

Mohammad Hassan Khalil's Islam and the Fate of Others (Oxford, 2012) traces how four major thinkers worked with these verses: al-Ghazālī, Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Taymiyya and the modern reformer Rashīd Riḍā. Al-Ghazālī, for example, held that people whom the message never reached, or reached only in a distorted form, are not in the same position as those who heard it clearly and turned away. Khalil's conclusion is that the classical tradition is more varied on this than modern polemic on either side suggests.⁵⁹ The theological schools also split over what reason alone can require. The main Ashʿarī position is that responsibility before God comes only with revelation, so a person the message never reached is not held to account for it; the Māturīdīs, like the Muʿtazila, held that reason can know that God exists, so even such a person is answerable for that much.¹¹⁵

What can be said without overreaching is this. Muslim scholarship has consistently held that the message matters and that rejecting it knowingly has consequences. It has also held, in its major figures, that God judges people according to what reached them, and that no one is in a position to pronounce on a particular person's end. That second point is the one most likely to matter at a funeral.

Caring for the dying

The Prophet ﷺ gave one instruction about the dying that everyone agrees on: "Prompt your dying to say: there is no god but Allah" (lā ilāha illā Allāh). It is in Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.⁶⁰ In practice this means saying the words gently near the person so that they can repeat them if they are able, not pressing them. Many families read Sūrat Yā Sīn at the bedside. The hadith usually quoted for it, "Recite Yā Sīn over your dying", is in Abū Dāwūd but al-Albānī graded it weak.⁶¹ That does not make reading Yā Sīn wrong; reading any part of the Qur'an is good. It does mean the specific instruction is not established, and a family that reads something else has missed nothing.

Nothing in the Islamic texts conflicts with modern palliative care. Pain relief, hospice, being at home or in hospital: these are medical decisions, and the ones that raise real religious questions (withdrawing treatment, organ donation, a do-not-resuscitate order) are exactly the ones to take to a scholar who knows the case, not to a website.

When death comes, the first words most Muslims say are the ones the Qur'an gives for any calamity: "Surely to Allah we belong and to Him we will [all] return" (innā li-llāhi wa-innā ilayhi rājiʿūn).⁶² The eyes are closed, the limbs straightened, and the body covered. Then the practical clock starts, because the Prophet ﷺ said, "Hurry with the bier": if the person was good, you are sending them to something better, and if not, you are putting a burden down.⁶³

In Australia "hurry" has limits that are nobody's fault. A doctor has to certify the death; some deaths go to the coroner; the cemetery has opening hours. The Melbourne Grand Mosque's funeral service notes that same-day burials are rare and most take place the next business day, or once the coroner has released the body.⁶⁴ That is still very fast by Australian standards, and funeral directors who work with Muslim families are used to it.

Washing and shrouding

The washing (ghusl) of the dead is a communal duty, meaning that if some people in the community do it, the obligation is lifted from the rest. The model is a hadith of Umm ʿAṭiyya in al-Bukhārī. When one of the Prophet's ﷺ daughters died, he told the women washing her to wash her "three or five times or more" if needed, with water and lote-tree leaves (sidr), and to put camphor in the last washing; afterwards he gave them his own waist-sheet to wrap her in.⁶⁵ Men wash men and women wash women; a wife may wash her husband by consensus, and most jurists, Mālik and Aḥmad among them, let a husband wash his wife, though Abū Ḥanīfa did not, holding that the marriage ends at death.¹¹⁰ The body is kept covered throughout.

Twelver Shia practice is closer to a fixed form: three complete washings, the first with water mixed with sidr, the second with water mixed with camphor, the third with plain water, done by a believer who knows the method. Sayyid al-Sīstānī's rulings also allow spouses to wash each other.⁶⁶

Martyrs killed in battle are the exception. The Prophet ﷺ had those who fell at Uḥud buried in their clothes and their blood, "neither washed nor was a funeral prayer offered for them".⁶⁷ Jurists debated which modern deaths count as martyrdom for this purpose; the ordinary rule for everyone else is washing.

The shroud (kafan) is plain cloth. ʿĀʾisha reports that the Prophet ﷺ was shrouded "in three Yemenite white Suḥūliyya pieces of cloth", with no shirt and no turban.⁶⁸ Three sheets for a man is the common Sunni practice. For women many manuals give five pieces, based on a report about the Prophet's daughter Umm Kulthūm; al-Albānī graded that report weak, so the number rests more on the practice of the schools than on the hadith itself.⁶⁹ In Twelver practice the shroud has three pieces: a loincloth, a shirt and a full wrap.⁷⁰

In Sydney and Melbourne, washing is usually done at a mosque or a Muslim funeral service's mortuary rather than at home, and families are generally welcome to take part. If you want to help wash a parent, say so early; the people who do this work are used to guiding a nervous son or daughter through it.

The funeral prayer

The funeral prayer (ṣalāt al-janāza) is short, said standing, with no bowing or prostration. The Prophet ﷺ announced the death of the Negus, the Christian-born king of Abyssinia who had sheltered the early Muslims, on the day it happened, then led his companions in rows and "said four takbīrs" (the words Allāhu akbar).⁷¹ Four takbīrs became Sunni practice, although Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ records that the Companion Zayd ibn Arqam once said five over a body and explained that the Prophet ﷺ had done so.¹⁰⁹ Twelver Shia pray with five.⁷²

Attending matters. The Prophet ﷺ promised a reward of one qīrāṭ to whoever stays for the prayer and two to whoever stays until the burial. Asked what two qīrāṭs were, he said: "like two huge mountains".⁷³ On women following the bier to the grave, Umm ʿAṭiyya said: "We were forbidden to accompany funeral processions, but not strictly."⁷⁴ Local practice in Australian mosques varies, and families usually know what their mosque does.

One prayer, several practices

The table sets out where the texts and the traditions differ over the rites. I have named a school's position only where I could find it stated in a source I could check. Where a school is not named, that reflects the limits of what I could verify, not silence in the tradition.

Burial in NSW and Victoria

The Sunni ideal is a laḥd, a niche cut into the side of the grave. Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ asked on his deathbed: "Make a niche for me in the side of the grave and set up bricks over me, as was done in the case of the Messenger of Allah."⁷⁹ The body is laid on its right side facing the qibla, and the grave is kept simple: the Prophet ﷺ forbade plastering graves, sitting on them and building over them,⁸⁰ and ʿAlī told one of his officers not to leave a raised grave without levelling it.⁸¹ Twelver rulings give the depth as roughly the height of an average person, or to the shoulders.¹⁶ Sayyid al-Sīstānī also rules that a Muslim should not be buried in a non-Muslim cemetery except by necessity, and treats a Muslim section inside a general cemetery as acceptable.⁷⁸ That, in effect, is how nearly all Australian Muslims are buried.

Coffin or shroud

Australian law assumes a coffin, and Islamic law prefers the body in its shroud directly in the earth. In NSW the gap has a formal answer. Under section 89 of the Public Health Regulation 2022, the Secretary of NSW Health can approve burial "in a grave without using a coffin". The conditions include wrapping the body in a sheet that prevents leakage, preparing it in a registered mortuary, the cemetery's agreement, a nameplate in the grave, and no prescribed infectious disease. Applications go to the local Public Health Unit, and in practice Muslim funeral services handle them.⁸²⁸³⁸⁴ In Victoria, the Department of Health's guidance says remains brought into a public cemetery must be enclosed in "a coffin, container or receptacle" that meets regulation 34; how Muslim sections apply that is a matter to ask the cemetery trust.⁸⁵ Where a coffin is used, Sayyid al-Sīstānī's ruling quoted above allows it.

If the coroner is involved

A post-mortem is one of the hardest things for many Muslim families, because it delays burial and because of the respect owed to the body. Both states give the family a voice. In NSW the senior next of kin can object in writing, giving "cultural, religious or personal" reasons, under section 96 of the Coroners Act 2009; the coroner weighs the objection, and if the post-mortem is still ordered the family gets 48 hours' notice and can apply to the Supreme Court in that time.⁸⁶ In Victoria the senior next of kin can object within 48 hours of the autopsy order on religious, cultural or other grounds, with a similar route to the Supreme Court.⁸⁷ Both courts warn that objecting can delay the release of the body, so do not fix a funeral time until the coroner has decided.

Where Muslims are buried

In Sydney the story is one of recurring shortage. Muslim burials at Rookwood began around 1900, and the Muslim Cemeteries Board counts more than 6,000 there, with limited plots left.⁸⁸⁸⁹ In April 2012 the NSW Government announced about 6,000 double-depth Muslim plots at Lot 10, Rookwood, with the Minister saying there was "less than 12 months' supply" left.⁹⁰ Riverstone, allocated by Blacktown Council in 2002, filled up and closed to new burials in 2020. A 2018 agreement with Catholic Cemeteries & Crematoria set aside Muslim plots at Kemps Creek.⁸⁸ In May 2023 an independent audit for the NSW Government found only about three years of Muslim burial supply left in Sydney.⁹¹ In September 2026 the chief executive of Metropolitan Memorial Parks, which manages about two-thirds of Rookwood, told ABC News that most of its "at need" space, graves bought after a death rather than in advance, would probably be exhausted around 2036, a particular worry for faiths that require burial, Muslims among them.¹¹⁶

The newest answer is Macarthur Memorial Park at Varroville, run by Catholic Cemeteries & Crematoria as a Crown land manager, with a Muslim burial lawn laid out to face the qibla, double-interment graves, and space for Sunni and Shia families alike. The operator calls it "the first Crown cemetery in over 80 years" with dedicated Muslim burial space.⁹² Sales opened in late 2024, with burials from April 2025.⁹³ One detail worth checking whatever cemetery you use: NSW now sells both perpetual interment rights and renewable rights of 25 to 99 years, after which remains may be moved to an ossuary.⁸³ Islamic law expects a grave to be left undisturbed, so most Muslim families will want a perpetual right.

In Melbourne, Muslim sections exist at several cemeteries run by the metropolitan trusts. The Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust has three named Islamic areas at Bunurong Memorial Park (Al Bustan, Dar Al-Maʾwa and Dar Al-Sakinah), with lawn and monumental graves.⁹⁴ The Melbourne Grand Mosque's funeral service lists Northern Memorial Park at Fawkner, Geelong Memorial Park, Maddingley and others, and advises contacting the Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust about Melbourne locations.⁶⁴

From death to burial: a step-through

This is the sequence as it usually runs for a Muslim family in NSW or Victoria. Step through it with the buttons, tick off what is done, or read it straight down if the buttons do not appear. It is a guide to the order of things, not a substitute for the funeral service, the mosque or the coroner's staff, who will tell you what applies in your case.

Wills and inheritance

This section is a pointer, not legal advice. The Qur'an sets out fixed shares for close relatives in 4:11–12, including the rule, much discussed today, that "the share of the male will be twice that of the female" among children.¹⁰⁰ The Prophet ﷺ capped voluntary bequests at a third of the estate. When Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ, ill and expecting to die, asked to give away most of his wealth, the Prophet ﷺ said: "A third, and a third is a lot," adding that it was better to leave heirs rich than dependent on others.¹⁰¹ In the Farewell Sermon, as reported by al-Tirmidhī, he said there is "no bequest for an heir"; Darussalam grades the narration ḥasan.¹⁰² The Twelver Shia rules on who inherits differ from the Sunni ones in several respects, which is one more reason to get advice from someone who knows your school.

Australian law does not apply these rules automatically. If a Muslim dies without a valid will, state intestacy rules decide who gets what, and they take no account of religion. If a Muslim makes a will that follows the Islamic shares, the will is valid if it is properly made, but it can be challenged. In NSW, Chapter 3 of the Succession Act 2006 lets eligible people (a spouse, children and some others) ask the Supreme Court for "family provision" if they have not been adequately provided for; Victoria has a similar regime in Part IV of the Administration and Probate Act 1958.¹⁰³ Brooke Thompson's 2023 article in the UNSW Law Journal argues that Islamic wills are especially exposed to such claims, because courts measure "adequate provision" against contemporary community standards rather than the testator's religious norms; she discusses Omari v Omari, an ACT case in which intestacy rules, not the Islamic shares the testator may have intended, ended up applying.¹⁰⁴

The practical point is simple. If you want your estate divided according to Islamic law, write a will, get it drafted by a lawyer who understands both systems, and talk to your family while you are alive. A surprise in the will is the most likely thing to end in court.

Mourning and remembering

When the Prophet's ﷺ infant son Ibrāhīm was dying, the Prophet ﷺ wept. Asked about it, he said: "The eyes are shedding tears and the heart is grieved, and we will not say except what pleases our Lord."⁹⁵ That hadith is the charter for Muslim grief. Tears are not a failure of faith. What the hadith rule out is the performance of grief: "He who slaps his cheeks, tears his clothes and follows the ways and traditions of the Days of Ignorance is not one of us."⁹⁶

There is also a hadith for the moment when grief is too much. The Prophet ﷺ passed a woman crying at a grave and told her to fear God and be patient. Not knowing who he was, she told him to leave her alone; he had not suffered what she had. When she found out who it was, she went to his house to apologise, and he told her: "patience is at the first stroke of a calamity".¹⁰⁵ It reads less like a rebuke than an explanation. The first moment is the hardest one, and nobody gets it right every time.

Formal mourning is short. Umm Ḥabība, whose father Abū Sufyān had died, put on perfume on the third day and quoted the Prophet ﷺ: a believing woman may not mourn "for more than three days for any dead person except her husband, for whom she should mourn for four months and ten days".⁹⁸ The widow's period matches the Qur'an's waiting period.⁹⁹ In the meantime the community's job is to feed the family: when news came of Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib's death, the Prophet ﷺ said, "Prepare food for the family of Jaʿfar for there came upon them an incident which has engaged them." Al-Albānī graded it ḥasan.⁹⁷ Many communities have turned this around, so that the bereaved family ends up catering for dozens of guests. The hadith points the other way.

Visiting and praying for the dead

Visiting graves was at first forbidden and then allowed: "I forbade you to visit graves, but you may now visit them."¹⁰⁶ Remembering death was the point, and al-Ghazālī gave the subject the last of the forty books of his great work on the religious life.¹

What reaches the dead is a question with a clear core and a disputed edge. The clear core is a hadith in Muslim: when a person dies their deeds come to an end except for three things: ongoing charity, knowledge that goes on benefiting people, and a righteous child who prays for them.¹⁰⁷ Prayer for the dead, charity given on their behalf and paying their debts are accepted by everyone. The disputed edge is whether the reward of Qur'an recitation can be given to the dead. Egypt's Dār al-Iftāʾ reports that the Ḥanafī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī schools recommend it, and that the Mālikī school first disliked it and later accepted it.⁷⁷ Inside the Shāfiʿī school the story is more tangled: al-Nawawī reports that its well-known view was that the reward of recitation does not reach the dead, while Aḥmad and some Shāfiʿīs held that it does, and a third view accepts it on conditions, such as praying afterwards for the reward to reach the person.¹¹³ Those who object usually point to the verse "each person will only have what they endeavoured towards".¹⁰⁸ Many communities, Shia and Sunni, hold gatherings to recite for the dead in the days and weeks after a death; others, particularly Salafi-leaning ones, regard fixed gatherings of this kind as an innovation. Those who object point out that no report shows the Prophet ﷺ or his Companions meeting on set days to recite for the dead, and cite his warning that "whoever introduces into this matter of ours what is not from it, it is rejected";¹²⁵ some add Jarīr ibn ʿAbd Allāh's remark that the Companions counted gathering at the bereaved family's house, and the family preparing food, as a form of wailing, though Darussalam grades that report weak.¹²⁶ Those who allow the gatherings reply that recitation is worship in itself, that the Prophet ﷺ told a man that charity given for his dead mother would reach her,¹²⁷ and that Egypt's Dār al-Iftāʾ, among others, holds that the reward of recitation reaches the dead.⁷⁷ What no sound report fixes is a particular day, such as the third or the fortieth; that part is custom. The site's page on Salafism sets out how that wider argument works.

None of these arguments needs to be settled at a graveside. What the texts agree on is that the dead can still be helped, by prayer, by charity and by the people they raised, and that grief, honestly felt and not performed, is allowed.

Glossary

Barzakh

The "barrier" or in-between state of the dead from death until resurrection (Qur'an 23:100).

Dajjāl

The false messiah whose appearance is one of the major signs of the Hour in the hadith.

Ghusl

The full ritual washing; here, the washing of the dead body.

Ḥawḍ

The Prophet's Pool on the Day of Judgment, from which his community drinks.

Janāza

A funeral, and the bier; ṣalāt al-janāza is the funeral prayer.

Jahannam, al-nār

Hell, the Fire.

Janna

The Garden, Paradise.

Kafan

The shroud.

Laḥd

A niche cut into the side of the grave, facing the qibla, where the body is laid.

Mahdi

"The rightly guided one", a figure of the end times; for Twelver Shia, the twelfth Imam.

Mīzān

The scales on which deeds are weighed.

Munkar and Nakīr

Names given in a hadith in al-Tirmidhī to the two angels who question the dead.

Qīrāṭ

A unit of reward mentioned for attending funerals, "like a huge mountain".

Qibla

The direction of the Kaʿba in Makka, faced in prayer and in the grave.

Shafāʿa

Intercession.

Ṣirāṭ

The bridge over the Fire that people cross on the Day.

Takbīr

Saying Allāhu akbar, "God is greatest".

Talqīn

Prompting: said to the dying (the testimony of faith) and, in some traditions, to the dead at the grave.

This is a research article, not a fatwa and not legal advice. It reports what the Qur'an, the hadith and scholars say, and what official Australian bodies publish. For decisions about a death in your own family, ask a qualified scholar you trust, the funeral service, and where an estate is involved, a lawyer.

Sources

These are the sources behind the numbered notes, in the order they are first cited. Qur'an references link to quran.com, and quotations follow Mustafa Khattab's translation there, with his bracketed words shown in square brackets. Hadith references link to sunnah.com: reports in al-Bukhārī's and Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ collections are accepted as authentic by Sunni scholarship and sunnah.com shows no separate grade for them; for other collections I give the grade shown on sunnah.com and who gave it. Australian legal and cemetery information was checked on the official pages in September 2026 and can change.

1. Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife (Kitāb dhikr al-mawt wa-mā baʿdahu), Book XL of the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, tr. T. J. Winter (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society; ISBN 0 946621 13 6): ghazali.org/works/gz100.htm
2. Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981; reissued Oxford University Press, 2002): worldcat.org/oclc/6666779
3. Qur'an 32:11 (the angel of death who is put in charge of you): quran.com/32/11. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
4. Qur'an 3:185 ("Every soul will taste death"): quran.com/3/185. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
5. Qur'an 56:83–87 (when the soul reaches the throat): quran.com/56/83-87. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
6. Qur'an 23:99–100 ("a barrier behind them until the Day they are resurrected"): quran.com/23/99-100. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
7. Qur'an 40:45–46 (Pharaoh's people exposed to the Fire morning and evening): quran.com/40/45-46. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
8. Qur'an 14:27 ("Allah makes the believers steadfast with the firm word"): quran.com/14/27. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
9. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1369: al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib: the believer in the grave testifies; Qur'an 14:27 revealed about the punishment of the grave. sunnah.com/bukhari:1369. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
10. Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 1022), Taṣḥīḥ al-iʿtiqād (The Emendation of a Shīʿite Creed), ch. 22, "The belief concerning the questioning in the grave" (the dead are asked about "his Lord, his Prophet, his faith and his Imam"; only the purely faithful and the wholly unbelieving are questioned), tr. on Al-Islam.org: al-islam.org
11. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1338: Anas: the dead person hears the footsteps of those leaving; two angels sit him up and ask what he used to say about "this man". sunnah.com/bukhari:1338. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
12. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2867: Zayd ibn Thābit: the pony shies at the graves of Banū al-Najjār; "if it were not that you would stop burying..."; seek refuge from the punishment of the grave and the trial of the Dajjāl. sunnah.com/muslim:2867. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
13. Sunan Abī Dāwūd 4753: al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib, the long hadith: "Who is your Lord? What is your religion? Who is this man who was sent among you?". sunnah.com/abudawud:4753. Graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī, as shown on sunnah.com.
14. Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 1071: Abū Hurayra: the two angels named al-Munkar and al-Nakīr. sunnah.com/tirmidhi:1071. Al-Tirmidhī: ḥasan gharīb. Graded ḥasan by Darussalam, as shown on sunnah.com.
15. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Munkar and Nakīr" (the two angels who test the faith of the dead in their graves): britannica.com/topic/Munkar
16. Office of Sayyid ʿAlī al-Sīstānī, Islamic Laws, "Recommended acts of burial" (depth; lowering the body; the talqīn naming the twelve Imams): sistani.org/english/book/48/2193
17. Sunan Abī Dāwūd 3221: ʿUthmān: "Ask forgiveness for your brother and ask for him to be made firm, for he is now being questioned". sunnah.com/abudawud:3221. Graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī, as shown on sunnah.com.
18. Qur'an 31:34 (knowledge of the Hour is with God): quran.com/31/34. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
19. Qur'an 47:18 (its signs have already come): quran.com/47/18. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
20. Qur'an 21:96 (Gog and Magog let loose): quran.com/21/96. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
21. Qur'an 27:82 (the beast brought out of the earth): quran.com/27/82. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
22. Qur'an 6:158 (the day some of the signs come, faith will not benefit a soul that did not believe before): quran.com/6/158. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
23. Qur'an 43:61 (Jesus as a sign of the Hour, in the common reading): quran.com/43/61. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
24. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 8a: ʿUmar, the hadith of Gabriel: the slave-girl gives birth to her mistress; barefoot shepherds compete in tall buildings. sunnah.com/muslim:8a. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
25. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2901a: Ḥudhayfa ibn Asīd: ten signs before the Hour (smoke, the Dajjāl, the beast, the sun rising from the west, the descent of Jesus, Gog and Magog, three landslides, a fire from Yemen). sunnah.com/muslim:2901a. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
26. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2937a: al-Nawwās ibn Samʿān: the Dajjāl, the descent of Jesus east of Damascus, Gog and Magog. sunnah.com/muslim:2937a. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
27. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Mahdi" (not in the Qur'an; absent from the collections of al-Bukhārī and Muslim; Sunni theologians questioning Mahdist beliefs while they form a necessary part of Shīʿite doctrine): britannica.com/topic/mahdi
28. Sunan Abī Dāwūd 4282: Ibn Masʿūd: a man of the Prophet's family, bearing his name, will fill the earth with justice. sunnah.com/abudawud:4282. Graded ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī, as shown on sunnah.com.
29. Qur'an 36:78–79 ("Who will give life to decayed bones?"): quran.com/36/78-79. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
30. Qur'an 39:68 (the Trumpet blown twice): quran.com/39/68. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
31. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6527: ʿĀʾisha: people gathered barefoot, naked and uncircumcised; the matter too grave for them to look at one another. sunnah.com/bukhari:6527. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
32. Qur'an 69:19–26 (the record given in the right hand or the left): quran.com/69/19-26. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
33. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6579: ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr: the Pool (al-ḥawḍ), a month's journey across, whiter than milk; whoever drinks will never thirst. sunnah.com/bukhari:6579. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
34. Qur'an 21:47 (the scales of justice): quran.com/21/47. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
35. Qur'an 101:6–9 (heavy and light scales): quran.com/101/6-9. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
36. Qur'an 99:6–8 (an atom's weight of good or evil): quran.com/99/6-8. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
37. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 7563: Abū Hurayra: two words light on the tongue and heavy in the balance. sunnah.com/bukhari:7563. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
38. Qur'an 19:71–72 ("There is none of you who will not pass over it"): quran.com/19/71-72. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
39. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 7439: Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī: the bridge with hooks; crossing like the blink of an eye, lightning, wind, horses; believers bring out those with faith the weight of a dinar, half a dinar, an atom. sunnah.com/bukhari:7439. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
40. Qur'an 2:255 (no intercession without His permission): quran.com/2/255. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
41. Qur'an 20:109 (intercession only for whom the Most Compassionate permits): quran.com/20/109. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
42. Qur'an 74:42–48 (the pleas of intercessors will not benefit them): quran.com/74/42-48. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
43. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4712: Abū Hurayra: people go to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, then to Muhammad, who prostrates beneath the Throne and intercedes. sunnah.com/bukhari:4712. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
44. Sunan Abī Dāwūd 4739: Anas: "My intercession is for those of my community who committed major sins". sunnah.com/abudawud:4739. Graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī, as shown on sunnah.com.
45. Shalahudin Kafrawi, "Muʿtazilites, Muʿtazila", Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (Macmillan Reference, 2004), on the five principles, including "promise and threats" (a great sinner remains in hell forever unless he repents): encyclopedia.com
46. Sayyid Moustafa al-Qazwini, Inquiries about Shiʿa Islam, "Intercession (Shafaʿah)" (prophets, Imams and friends of God intercede by God's permission), Al-Islam.org: al-islam.org
47. Qur'an 47:15 (rivers of water, milk, wine and honey): quran.com/47/15. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
48. Qur'an 32:17 (what is kept hidden for them of delight): quran.com/32/17. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
49. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3244: Abū Hurayra, a ḥadīth qudsī: "what no eye has seen, no ear has heard"; with Qur'an 32:17. sunnah.com/bukhari:3244. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
50. Qur'an 4:56 (skins replaced): quran.com/4/56. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
51. Qur'an 7:46–47 (the people on the heights): quran.com/7/46-47. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
52. Qur'an 11:106–108 ("except what your Lord wills"): quran.com/11/106-108. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
53. Qur'an 78:21–23 ("for [endless] ages"): quran.com/78/21-23. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
54. Jon Hoover, "Islamic Universalism: Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's Salafī Deliberations on the Duration of Hell-Fire", The Muslim World 99.1 (2009), 181–201: doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.2009.01260.x; see also Hoover, "Against Islamic Universalism: ʿAlī al-Ḥarbī's 1990 Attempt to Prove that Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya Affirm the Eternity of Hell-Fire", in Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (De Gruyter, 2013), 377–399: Hoover's bibliography
55. Qur'an 4:48 (God does not forgive association of partners with Him): quran.com/4/48. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
56. Qur'an 39:53 ("do not lose hope in the mercy of Allah"): quran.com/39/53. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
57. Qur'an 2:62 (believers, Jews, Christians and Sabians): quran.com/2/62. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
58. Qur'an 17:15 (God does not punish a people until a messenger has been sent): quran.com/17/15. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
59. Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Islam and the Fate of Others: The Salvation Question (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), with chapters on al-Ghazālī, Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Taymiyya and Rashīd Riḍā: global.oup.com; review by Elliott Bazzano, American Journal of Islam and Society: ajis.org
60. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 916a: Abū Saʿīd: "Prompt your dying to say: there is no god but Allah". sunnah.com/muslim:916a. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
61. Sunan Abī Dāwūd 3121: Maʿqil ibn Yasār: "Recite Yā Sīn over your dying". sunnah.com/abudawud:3121. Graded ḍaʿīf (weak) by al-Albānī, as shown on sunnah.com.
62. Qur'an 2:156 ("Surely to Allah we belong and to Him we will return"): quran.com/2/156. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
63. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1315: Abū Hurayra: "Hurry with the bier". sunnah.com/bukhari:1315. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
64. Melbourne Grand Mosque, "Janazah (funeral) services" (cemeteries used in Melbourne and Geelong; burials usually the next business day or after coronial release): mgm.org.au
65. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1253: Umm ʿAṭiyya: washing the Prophet's daughter three, five or more times with water and lote-tree leaves (sidr), camphor in the last washing. sunnah.com/bukhari:1253. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
66. Office of Sayyid ʿAlī al-Sīstānī, Islamic Laws, "Method of performing the ghusl given to a corpse" (three washings: with sidr, with camphor, with plain water; spouses may wash each other): sistani.org/english/book/48/2186
67. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1343: Jābir: the martyrs of Uḥud buried in their blood, neither washed nor prayed over. sunnah.com/bukhari:1343. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
68. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1264: ʿĀʾisha: the Prophet shrouded in three white Yemeni sheets, with no shirt or turban. sunnah.com/bukhari:1264. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
69. Sunan Abī Dāwūd 3157: Laylā bint Qāʾif: the pieces of cloth for Umm Kulthūm's shroud. sunnah.com/abudawud:3157. Graded ḍaʿīf (weak) by al-Albānī, as shown on sunnah.com.
70. Office of Sayyid ʿAlī al-Sīstānī, Islamic Laws, "Laws of shrouding (takfīn) a corpse" (three pieces: a loincloth, a shirt and a full cover): sistani.org/english/book/48/2187
71. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1245: Abū Hurayra: the funeral prayer for the Negus with four takbīrs. sunnah.com/bukhari:1245. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
72. Office of Sayyid ʿAlī al-Sīstānī, Islamic Laws, "Method of performing ṣalāt al-mayyit" (five takbīrs; no Fātiḥa): sistani.org/english/book/48/2190
73. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1325: Abū Hurayra: one qīrāṭ for the prayer, two for staying until burial, "like two huge mountains". sunnah.com/bukhari:1325. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
74. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1278: Umm ʿAṭiyya: "We were forbidden to follow funeral processions, but not strictly". sunnah.com/bukhari:1278. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
75. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1335: Ṭalḥa ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAwf: Ibn ʿAbbās recited al-Fātiḥa in the funeral prayer and said it was the sunna. sunnah.com/bukhari:1335. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
76. IslamWeb, fatwa 199033, "Al-Aḥnāf's evidence for not reciting al-Fātiḥa in funeral prayer" (the Ḥanafī position and the reports from ʿUmar, ʿAlī, Ibn ʿUmar and Abū Hurayra): islamweb.net
77. Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyya, fatwa 6494, "Reciting the Qur'an for the deceased: does he/she receive the reward?" (the majority permit it; the earlier Mālikī dislike and later Mālikī acceptance): dar-alifta.org
78. Sayyid ʿAlī al-Sīstānī, A Code of Practice for Muslims in the West, "Death related issues" (coffin burial permitted if the body faces the qibla; burial in non-Muslim cemeteries only by necessity, with a Muslim section as an exception), Al-Islam.org: al-islam.org
79. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 966: Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ: "Make a niche (laḥd) for me and set up bricks over me, as was done for the Messenger of Allah". sunnah.com/muslim:966. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
80. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 970a: Jābir: the Prophet forbade plastering graves, sitting on them and building over them. sunnah.com/muslim:970a. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
81. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 969a: ʿAlī to Abū al-Hayyāj: "do not leave a raised grave without levelling it". sunnah.com/muslim:969a. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
82. NSW Health, "Burial of a deceased person in a grave without a coffin" (Public Health Regulation 2022, s. 89; approval by the Secretary; conditions), last updated 1 September 2022: health.nsw.gov.au
83. Cemeteries & Crematoria NSW, "Know more about my options" (perpetual and renewable interment rights; applying to NSW Health for shroud burial): cemeteries.nsw.gov.au
84. State Library of NSW, Rest assured: a legal guide to wills, estates, planning ahead and funerals in NSW, ch. 16, "Arranging a funeral" (updated 21 January 2025): sl.nsw.gov.au
85. Victorian Department of Health, "Interments" (remains brought into a public cemetery must be enclosed in a coffin, container or receptacle complying with r. 34 of the Cemeteries and Crematoria Regulations), updated 16 June 2025: health.vic.gov.au
86. Coroners Court of NSW, "Objecting to a post mortem" (senior next of kin, s. 96 Coroners Act 2009; written objection giving cultural, religious or personal reasons; 48 hours to apply to the Supreme Court): coroners.nsw.gov.au
87. Coroners Court of Victoria, "Forensic process" (senior next of kin may object to an autopsy on religious, cultural or other grounds within 48 hours; Supreme Court application within 48 hours of a refusal): coronerscourt.vic.gov.au
88. Muslim Cemeteries Board (NSW), "History" (Muslim burials at Rookwood from about 1900; Riverstone allocated 2002 and closed to new burials in 2020; Kemps Creek agreement of 2018): muslimcemeteries.com
89. Muslim Cemeteries Board (NSW), "Affiliated cemeteries" (Rookwood, "over 6,000 Muslim burials", limited plots left; Kemps Creek; Riverstone closed): muslimcemeteries.com
90. NSW Government media release, "NSW Government secures crucial cemetery space for Muslim and Jewish communities", 2 April 2012 (about 6,000 double-depth Muslim plots at Lot 10, Rookwood; "less than 12 months' supply"): dpi.nsw.gov.au
91. NSW Government media release, "Audit reveals critical shortage of grave sites in Sydney", 19 May 2023 (three years of Muslim burial supply left; merger of Crown cemetery managers announced): nsw.gov.au
92. Macarthur Memorial Park (Catholic Cemeteries & Crematoria, a Crown land manager), "Muslim burial lawn" (double-interment graves facing the qibla; open to Sunni and Shia; "the first Crown cemetery in over 80 years" with dedicated Muslim space): mmpark.com.au
93. "Muslim cemetery space secured in Sydney", Australasian Muslim Times (AMUST), 2 December 2024 (Macarthur Memorial Park, opening April 2025, and Kemps Creek Memorial Park): amust.com.au
94. Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust (Victoria), "Special areas" (Islamic areas Al Bustan, Dar Al-Maʾwa and Dar Al-Sakinah at Bunurong Memorial Park): smct.org.au
95. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1303: Anas: the death of the Prophet's son Ibrāhīm; "The eyes shed tears and the heart grieves". sunnah.com/bukhari:1303. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
96. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1294: Ibn Masʿūd: "He is not one of us who slaps his cheeks, tears his clothes". sunnah.com/bukhari:1294. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
97. Sunan Abī Dāwūd 3132: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar: "Prepare food for the family of Jaʿfar". sunnah.com/abudawud:3132. Graded ḥasan by al-Albānī, as shown on sunnah.com.
98. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1280: Umm Ḥabība: no mourning beyond three days except for a husband, four months and ten days. sunnah.com/bukhari:1280. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
99. Qur'an 2:234 (the widow's waiting period of four months and ten days): quran.com/2/234. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
100. Qur'an 4:11–12 (the fixed shares of inheritance): quran.com/4/11-12. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
101. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2742: Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ: "A third, and a third is a lot"; better to leave heirs rich than dependent. sunnah.com/bukhari:2742. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
102. Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 2120: Abū Umāma: the Farewell Sermon, "there is no bequest for an heir". sunnah.com/tirmidhi:2120. Graded ḥasan by Darussalam, as shown on sunnah.com; al-Tirmidhī discusses the narrator Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh.
103. Succession Act 2006 (NSW), Chapter 3 (family provision) and Chapter 4 (intestacy), NSW Legislation: legislation.nsw.gov.au; for Victoria, Part IV of the Administration and Probate Act 1958 (Vic), discussed in Victorian Law Reform Commission, Succession Laws, ch. 6, "Family provision": lawreform.vic.gov.au
104. Brooke Thompson, "Family Provision and Islamic Wills: Preserving the Testator's Wishes Through Testamentary Arbitration?" (2023) 46(1) UNSW Law Journal 205 (discussing Omari v Omari [2012] ACTSC 33): unsw.edu.au
105. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1283: Anas: the woman at the grave; "patience is at the first stroke of a calamity". sunnah.com/bukhari:1283. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
106. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 977a: Burayda: "I forbade you to visit graves, but now visit them". sunnah.com/muslim:977a. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
107. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 1631: Abū Hurayra: when a person dies his deeds end except three: ongoing charity, beneficial knowledge, a righteous child who prays for him. sunnah.com/muslim:1631. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
108. Qur'an 53:38–41 ("each person will only have what they endeavoured towards"): quran.com/53/38-41. Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran, as shown on quran.com.
109. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 957: Ibn Abī Laylā: Zayd ibn Arqam, who usually said four takbīrs, said five over one body and said the Messenger of Allah had done so: sunnah.com/muslim:957. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
110. Islam Question & Answer, no. 155045, "Ruling on one of the spouses washing the other after death" (consensus that a wife may wash her husband; al-Nawawī reports Mālik, Aḥmad and others permitting a husband to wash his wife, and Abū Ḥanīfa and al-Thawrī forbidding it): islamqa.info/en/answers/155045
111. Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī, al-Risāla, ch. 21, "On the funeral prayer" (four takbīrs, with supplications and no recitation named), English translation on the International Islamic University Malaysia site: iium.edu.my
112. Sayyid Sābiq, Fiqh al-Sunna, vol. 4, "Burial" (talqīn after burial preferred by al-Shāfiʿī and some others, disliked in the Mālikī and Ḥanbalī schools; burial in a coffin disapproved unless the ground is wet or soft), English translation: islamicstudies.info
113. Islam Question & Answer, no. 459033, "Reading Qur'an for the deceased" (al-Nawawī: the well-known Shāfiʿī view is that the reward of recitation does not reach the dead; Aḥmad and some Shāfiʿīs held that it does; a third, conditional view): islamqa.info/en/answers/459033
114. Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr on Qur'an 7:46 (the people of al-Aʿrāf as those whose good and bad deeds are equal, reported from Ḥudhayfa and others), English on quran.com: quran.com/7:46 (Ibn Kathīr)
115. Arnold Yasin Mol, "Why Māturīdism?", Leiden Arabic Humanities Blog, 14 August 2022 (the Ashʿarī view that responsibility comes only through revelation; the Māturīdī view, with the Muʿtazila, that God's existence can be known by reason; al-Māturīdī on Qur'an 17:15): leidenarabichumanitiesblog.nl
116. Declan Bowring, "The Southern Hemisphere's biggest necropolis is bursting at the seams", ABC News, 12 September 2026 (Metropolitan Memorial Parks manages about two-thirds of Rookwood; its chief executive expects "at need" space to be largely exhausted around 2036; a concern for Muslim and Orthodox communities): abc.net.au
117. Dār al-Iftāʾ al-Miṣriyya, "Ḥukm talqīn al-mayyit", fatwa 3271, Shawqī ʿAllām, 9 May 2013 (quotes al-Nawawī, Rawḍat al-ṭālibīn 2/138, that the hadith is weak but tolerated in devotional matters; Ibn Ḥajar, al-Talkhīṣ al-ḥabīr, that its chain is ṣāliḥ; Ibn al-ʿArabī among Mālikīs recommending it): dar-alifta.org/ar/fatwa/details/12664 (Arabic).
118. Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhira, 1968), vol. 2, p. 377, "Faṣl: al-talqīn baʿd al-dafn": nothing found from Aḥmad beyond al-Athram's report that he had seen only the people of Syria do it; al-Qāḍī and Abū al-Khaṭṭāb: it is recommended: shamela.ws/book/8463/825 (Arabic).
119. al-Mardāwī, al-Inṣāf fī maʿrifat al-rājiḥ min al-khilāf, ed. Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī, vol. 2, pp. 548–549: "recommended according to most of the school's jurists"; Ibn Taymiyya: permissible, "the most balanced of the views": shamela.ws/book/21609/1043 (Arabic).
120. al-Buhūtī, Kashshāf al-qināʿ ʿan matn al-Iqnāʿ (Riyadh: Saudi Ministry of Justice edition), vol. 4, p. 198: "most recommended prompting him after his burial", citing the Abū Umāma report: shamela.ws/book/622/1698 (Arabic).
121. al-Ḥaṭṭāb, Mawāhib al-jalīl fī sharḥ Mukhtaṣar Khalīl (Dār al-Fikr, 3rd edn, 1992), vol. 2, pp. 219–220: the dying person is prompted with the testimony; Khalīl "did not mention the talqīn after burial"; al-Tādilī's reading of the Risāla; Abū Bakr ibn al-Ṭallāʿ: "it is what we choose and practise"; also recommended by al-Qurṭubī and al-Thaʿālibī; loud prompting called an innovation: shamela.ws/book/569/769 and /770 (Arabic).
122. al-Dardīr, al-Sharḥ al-kabīr on Khalīl's Mukhtaṣar, with al-Dasūqī's Ḥāshiya (Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), vol. 1, p. 414: among the recommended acts at death, prompting the dying with the testimony, said in his presence without telling him "say": shamela.ws/book/21604/413 (Arabic).
123. al-Nafrāwī, al-Fawākih al-dawānī ʿalā Risālat Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī (Dār al-Fikr, 1995), vol. 1, p. 284: talqīn after burial is not the practice in Mālik's school; al-Nawawī held it recommended and the Mālikī Ibn al-Ṭallāʿ adopted it: shamela.ws/book/21589/282 (Arabic).
124. Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Qāsim, 37 vols (Riyadh, 1381–1386/1961–1967), the standard referencing system; cited here from the King Fahd Complex reprint (Madina, 1425/2004) as on shamela.ws, which keeps the page numbers of the Riyadh edition (Jon Hoover, "Arabic texts", Taymiyyan Studies: sites.google.com), vol. 24, p. 296 (page checked on shamela, 1 October 2026): Aḥmad and others permitted the talqīn, a group of Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs recommended it, and "a group of scholars among Mālik's followers and others" disliked it: shamela.ws/book/7289/12365 (Arabic).
125. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2697: ʿĀʾisha: "whoever introduces into this matter of ours what is not from it, it is rejected". sunnah.com/bukhari:2697. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ; also Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 1718a: sunnah.com/muslim:1718a.
126. Sunan Ibn Mājah 1612: Jarīr ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Bajalī: "We used to think that gathering with the family of the deceased and preparing food was a form of wailing." sunnah.com/ibnmajah:1612. Graded ḍaʿīf (weak) by Darussalam, as shown on sunnah.com.
127. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1388: ʿĀʾisha: a man whose mother died suddenly asks whether alms given on her behalf will reach her, and the Prophet says yes. sunnah.com/bukhari:1388. In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
128. Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah, tr. Franz Rosenthal, ch. 3, section 51, "The Fatimid. The opinions of the people about him. The truth about the matter" (after reviewing the Mahdi traditions: "Very few are above criticism"): muslimphilosophy.com
129. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 181a and 181b: Ṣuhayb: God lifts the veil and nothing given to the people of the Garden is dearer to them than the sight of their Lord; in Ḥammād ibn Salama's version the Prophet recites 10:26. sunnah.com/muslim:181a, 181b. In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ. Qur'an 10:26: quran.com/10/26.
130. Martin J. McDermott, "Awāʾel al-maqālāt", Encyclopaedia Iranica, on al-Shaykh al-Mufīd's list of points where the Imāmīs agreed and disagreed with the Muʿtazila, including the denial that God can be seen: iranicaonline.org