Praying for one whose state is unknown: Did he pray?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, if a man dies and it is not known whether he prayed or not, is the funeral prayer performed for him and is he asked for forgiveness?
Answer:
The default for Muslims, praise be to Allah, is goodness. As long as you do not know of him anything that takes him out of Islam, you pray for him. This is because the default for the funerals of Muslims, and the default for what is brought into the mosques of Muslims, is Islam, good opinion, and praise be to Allah. This is unless you know with certainty that this deceased died other than upon Islam. If you know with certainty, then you do not pray for him.
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, if a man dies and it is not known whether he prayed or not, is the funeral prayer performed for him and is he asked for forgiveness?
Answer:
The default for Muslims, praise be to Allah, is goodness. As long as you do not know of him anything that takes him out of Islam, you pray for him. This is because the default for the funerals of Muslims, and the default for what is brought into the mosques of Muslims, is Islam, good opinion, and praise be to Allah. This is unless you know with certainty that this deceased died other than upon Islam. If you know with certainty, then you do not pray for him.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، 141/43 شرح زاد المستقنع/ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com (1:04:15)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.