Cemetery visits and mourning

Visiting the cemetery

I had forbidden you to visit graves: visit them, for they remind of the hereafter.Muslim 976; al-Bukhari 1291

The visit is recommended for men; many scholars also allow it to women when done without elegance or wailing. The greeting of peace to the dead is reported from the Prophet: "Peace be upon you, inhabitants of the dwellings, believers and Muslims; and we, Allah willing, will join you" (Muslim 975). The visit recalls death and pushes toward good deeds.

What is forbidden or disliked at the cemetery

• Sitting and stepping on graves: "better for one of you to sit on a burning ember that burns his clothes and touches his flesh than to sit on a grave" (Muslim 970);
• loud weeping: "she is not one of us who strikes her cheeks, tears her garments and speaks the words of ignorance" (Muslim 103);
• swearing by the dead, building over graves, prostrating to them or offering them anything: see the page on graves and mausoleums;
• ritual visits on fixed dates (anniversaries, seasons): no date was fixed by the Sunna, as the contemporary fatwas made precise (see the page on mourning traditions).

Mourning

• The widow: four months and ten days (sura al-Baqara 234), without perfume, kohl, adorned garments or jewellery (Muslim 968);
• other relatives: three days (Muslim 968);
• silent tears are not forbidden: the Prophet wept over his son Ibrahim and said: "the heart grieves, the eye sheds tears, and we say only what pleases the Lord" (al-Bukhari 1303).

Invocations at the cemetery

O Allah, forgive our dead and our living, our present and our absent, our young and our old, our men and our women.Muslim 2145

One supplicates Allah for the dead; one asks nothing of the dead: the visit is a reminder and a mercy, not an intermediary.