Delaying the burial of the deceased to wait for his family or for people to gather
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, is it permissible to delay the burial and preparation of the deceased in order to wait for his family to arrive from a journey, or for people to gather to pray over him?
Answer:
By Allah, hastening with it is better. Hastening with it is better than delaying it for the sake of the presence of his relatives or the presence of those who are absent, because this harms the deceased. As for the absent ones, if they arrive, they pray over the grave; they do not miss out on that. They pray over the grave, unless their arrival is near and does not take much time, such that they arrive, for example, after a few hours; in that case, the matter is easy. But if it is delayed for days, one day, two days, or three days, this is not permissible, because this harms the deceased.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, is it permissible to delay the burial and preparation of the deceased in order to wait for his family to arrive from a journey, or for people to gather to pray over him?
Answer:
By Allah, hastening with it is better. Hastening with it is better than delaying it for the sake of the presence of his relatives or the presence of those who are absent, because this harms the deceased. As for the absent ones, if they arrive, they pray over the grave; they do not miss out on that. They pray over the grave, unless their arrival is near and does not take much time, such that they arrive, for example, after a few hours; in that case, the matter is easy. But if it is delayed for days, one day, two days, or three days, this is not permissible, because this harms the deceased.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، 141/43 شرح زاد المستقنع/ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com (1:10:32)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.