Fatwas Archive

Question: What is your view on raising graves with construction, and on placing marble plaques inscribed with the deceased’s name on the grave? We have heard much talk about this.

Question: A highway passed through a valley between two mountains. The engineers plotted its course through a cemetery. After we tried to divert the route from over the cemetery, the engineers shifted it slightly but were forced to pass over...

Question: If the deceased bequeathed that he be buried in a particular place, or that a particular man should perform the funeral prayer over him, must his heirs fulfill his bequest? Is it permissible for them to contravene it by...

Question: Is it permissible to pray over a deceased person who used to be lax about insulting others and exposing the thigh?

Question: A woman married and was steadfast upon piety. Then she died suddenly, and people began circulating talk that she had drunk poison. Before her death, she had asked some of her relatives for forgiveness. Is it permissible to supplicate...

A questioner asked me: his father is ill and near death, and he has persisted in corrupt beliefs—anthropomorphizing Allah, Exalted is He, hating the People of the Household (Ahl al-Bayt) and showing enmity toward them, and showing allegiance to the...

Question: Is one who kills himself by mistake, outside of battle, washed? And likewise one killed by mistake?

Question: A man attacked another and killed him without right, though there had been quarrel and dispute between them. Is the slain person to be washed or not?

Question: Is one who is killed by mistake—or by a stray bullet—washed?

Question: If the deceased wrote in a notebook what he owed and what was owed to him—debts, injustices, claims, and deposits—clearly laying it out in his own handwriting, known to his heirs and others, but did not have witnesses—must his...