The Dead Hearing Those Who Call Them
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. The questioner says: Do the dead hear those who call them and recognize them?
Answer:
Allah (Exalted and Majestic is He) says:[Fatir 35:14] Therefore, it is not permissible to call upon the dead, because they are dead and do not hear. Even if they did hear, they would not be able to respond, because they are helpless and imprisoned in their graves. You have been given by Allah life, power, the ability to walk, and the soul. How can you go to a lifeless corpse? Yes, you may visit them to make supplication for them; you benefit the dead by making supplication for them and sending peace upon them. But going to them in order to seek blessing from them, or to ask them for something, or to have a need fulfilled, is shirk (associating partners with Allah). Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. The questioner says: Do the dead hear those who call them and recognize them?
Answer:
Allah (Exalted and Majestic is He) says:
If you invoke them, they do not hear your supplication; and if they heard, they would not respond to you
إِن تَدْعُوهُمْ لَا يَسْمَعُوا دُعَاءَكُمْ وَلَوْ سَمِعُوا مَا اسْتَجَابُوا لَكُمْ
Source
شرح إغاثة اللهفان من مصائد الشيطان لابن القيم، فصل ومن أعظم مكايده : ما نصبه للناس من الأنصاب والأزلام — islamhouse.com (58:26)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.