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Every Dead Person Will Be Questioned after Death

Question

When a person dies just after burial questioning takes place in the graveyard by the angles. When a person's burial takes place after two or three days or when a person died in an accident and the body is not found how and where does questioning take place? Where is the person's soul kept in that period?

Answer

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allaah exalt his mention ) is His slave and Messenger.

Issues that are related to a dead person and his state in the grave are part and parcel of the Unseen that we have to believe in on the whole unless the Sharee'ah provides us with some details. Furthermore, we have to believe in the Unseen as presented to us and we should not investigate what we do not know. Here, we should know that the life of Al-Barzakh (life between death and resurrection; life in the grave) is unknown except by Allah. The life of Al-Barzakh is outside the human imagination and thinking. So, it is completely beyond our thinking as we do with issues of the present life.

According to the Sharee'ah, we know that the dead person, whether he is in the grave, or the sea, or in birds' or animal's stomach, or destroyed by fire, he/she will be questioned in a manner that is known only to Allah. Allah is able to do everything. When Prophet Abraham asked Allah (what means): {And [mention] when Abraham said, "My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead."} [Quran 2:260]

So, Allah ordered him to take four birds of different kinds, to cut them into pieces and then to throw them on a mountain. So, Prophet Ibraheem  may  Allaah  exalt  his  mention did what Allah ordered him to do and held the bird's head in his custody. Then, Allah ordered him to call on them to come again, and he did. So, the birds came again by Allah's favor.
Allah Says (what means): {[Allah] said, "Have you not believed?" He said, "Yes, but [I ask] only that my heart may be satisfied." [Allah] said, "Take four birds and commit them to yourself. Then [after slaughtering them] put on each hill a portion of them; then call them – they will come [flying] to you in haste. And know that Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise."} [Quran 2:260]

In brief, each and every dead person will be questioned and held responsible for his/her deeds. This is what every Muslim has to believe it.

For more benefit on the life in Al-Barzakh (the interval period between death and resurrection), please refer to Fataawa 10565, 83719, 16778, 17286, 48844 and 84517.

Allah knows best.

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