In it that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) addressed the dead of Quraysh at Badr; does it contain that the dead person hears in his grave?

The questioner : ... that they do not hear, and the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) when he addressed the disbelievers after...

The Shaykh : The pit of Badr, do you mean?

The questioner : The pit of Badr, didn't he say: ?

The Shaykh : Yes.

The questioner : It was specific to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), meaning?

The Shaykh : Yes, did you catch on now?The Shaykh : [He laughs]. My master, this story is actually very important. I had printed a book in Sham on this subject, which is very important, titled "The Clear Verses Regarding the Dead Not Hearing According to the Hanafi Scholars." This is not my authorship; it is the work of al-Alusi, the brother of Mahmud al-Alusi, the author of the great tafsir called "Ruh al-Ma'ani." His brother's name isThe Shaykh : Nu'man al-Alusi. He wrote this treatise, "The Clear Verses Regarding the Dead Not Hearing According to the Hanafi Scholars." He was a Hanafi and a scholar, and he gave a lesson there in Baghdad and touched upon this issue, clarifying to them that the dead do not hear. So they raised a commotion against him; the people did not have an open mind. So he went and composed this treatise. The treatise remained in seclusion for less than ten years until I obtained a photocopied version of it. So I copied it, verified it, traced its hadiths, and wrote an introduction of about fifty pages, the introduction only, and it is printed. So I dealt with this subject in my own way. In summary, I cited this hadith because its apparent meaning demolishes the entire treatise, "The Clear Verses Regarding the Dead Not Hearing," and the hadith explicitly says: . But the truth is that when a person stands with this hadith with understanding, the issue turns upside down.
The hadith is an argument for the book's topic, not against it. And since the author did not deal with this issue, his concern was to convince the people who had agitated against him there with the sayings of the school's imams. This is a method that is useful with fanatical people. So I completed his topic from the hadith perspective, from the evidence. Look now at how the story is an argument that the dead do not hear, but rather it is, as you recently realized, a specific case. First, note with me that this answer was an answer to a question from whom? From 'Umar ibn al-Khattab. When the Messenger (peace be upon him), three days after the war had laid down its arms and the polytheists were defeated except for those who fled, and the leaders of Quraysh were thrown into a pit there, stood after three days and called out: . 'Umar ibn al-Khattab said: O Messenger of Allah, you are calling out to bodies in which there are no souls. In a narration: They have been left to rot; their stench has risen.
Here we pause for a moment. 'Umar's statement to his Prophet indicates that 'Umar was saturated with the idea that the dead do not hear. Otherwise, how would he come with this frankness and this boldness to say to him: You are calling out to bodies in which there are no souls, or they have been left to rot?!
Where did 'Umar ibn al-Khattab get this knowledge to stand before the Messenger's calling out to the disbelievers? There is no doubt he had no path and no means other than the Messenger (peace be upon him). From him he received this knowledge. This is the first point we need to focus on.
A second point comes: what 'Umar relied upon in what he said to his Prophet (peace be upon him) is either correct or incorrect. If it is correct, the Messenger affirms it; if it is incorrect, he refutes it. So what was the position of the Messenger (peace be upon him)? Did he affirm it or deny it? He affirmed it, contrary to what some think that he denied it. No, but this truth requires some knowledge of the principles of jurisprudence, which includes the general and the specific, the absolute and the restricted, and so on.
When 'Umar said this to the Messenger, he was relying on verses and hadiths he received from his Prophet, so his mind was saturated with the idea that the dead do not hear, like the previous verse , . If it had not been firmly established in 'Umar's mind as an error, he would have said to him: Where did you get this? He did not answer him with this answer. Rather, he said: . He did not say about all the dead; these are not more responsive to what I say than they are. So here he introduced a restriction and a specification into 'Umar's concept, as if he is saying: Let us explain the issue. O 'Umar, what you know is correct, but learn something new: that these people now are not more responsive to what I say than they are. And therefore, in a narration in "Sahih al-Bukhari," one of the narrators of the hadith, Qatadah, said: Allah revived them for him, so they heard his voice as a rebuke and a humiliation. Do you see how? The issue turned from the hadith being evidence that the dead hear to the dead not hearing, but these heard. Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) revived them for him (peace and blessings be upon him) to humiliate them and rebuke them before they see the painful punishment. I explained all of this in the introduction of the aforementioned book.
And I mentioned, incidentally, another story; it is exactly similar to this in that it has a very subtle indication of the opposite of what some people imagine. You must have heard the hadith of 'A'ishah (may Allah be pleased with her), who said: Abu Bakr al-Siddiq entered upon me and the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) was lying in state at my place, and with him were two slave girls singing the song of Bu'ath, beating the drum for him. When Abu Bakr entered, he was shocked by the matter, so he shouted: Is the flute of Satan in the house of the Messenger of Allah?! This is like 'Umar's saying: You are calling out to bodies in which there are no souls. How would Abu Bakr al-Siddiq advance before the Messenger in his house and say: The flute of Satan in the house of the Messenger of Allah, unless he had been taught this knowledge? He learned this knowledge from the Messenger (peace be upon him). And the completion of the hadith confirms this understanding for us. But the Messenger did with Abu Bakr here what he did with 'Umar: he introduced a restriction into his previous concept. Likewise, here the Messenger introduced a restriction into Abu Bakr's previous correct concept. Why? He said to him after he raised his head: .
As if he is saying to him: What you said is correct, the flute of Satan, but this is excepted on the day of the festival. Therefore, now beating the drum is forbidden because it is among the entertainments, but the drum in the wedding and the drum on the day of the festival are excepted from the prohibition. Just as that hadith became evidence that the dead do not hear except those disbelieving polytheists, this hadith turned into evidence that it is not permissible to beat the drum except on the day of the festival, and in the other hadith, except in announcing the marriage.
So the hadith of Abu Bakr is evidence that the drum is an instrument of amusement and a flute among the flutes of Satan, except on the day of the festival.
So there is no problem with the rule: at all. Then the speech leads to speech: if anyone hears anything from the dead, who is better than the Messenger of Allah? No one. Then if anyone hears something in this world, what is more fitting for him to hear than the remembrance of Allah and what accompanies it? Does he hear disbelief and misguidance? No, he hears something he takes pleasure in, at least. If the Messenger (peace be upon him) says: , then when one of us says: Peace be upon you, O Messenger of Allah, and he is dead as He (the Exalted) said: , if a dead person in the world heard, it would be the Messenger. And if the Messenger heard something, he would not hear disbelief and misguidance; he would hear praise of him and prayer upon him. So what about when he says to the angels: ? He did not say: I hear the peace. If the Messenger does not hear his prayer, who is this dead person who will hear what happens in the world of any kind of remembrance or prayer or recitation of the Qur'an or so on?
This reminds me of a habit among people that indicates their heedlessness and ignorance. I took advantage of the benefit I derived from this hadith about twenty-five years ago. I had been appointed to teach the subject of hadith at the Islamic University, which still exists today but did not yet exist at that time. I was in the process of handling my exit visa, and the visa reached an officer who appeared to have a religious sentiment. Seeing that I was traveling to al-Madinah, he said to me, "Are you going to travel to al-Madinah?" I said to him, "If Allah wills." He said to me, "May I ask you for something?" I said to him, "Please go ahead." He said, "May you arrive safely and convey my salam to the Messenger (peace be upon him)." I said to him, "My brother..."