What Waits in the Grave

So too, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) describes what is said in the grave, when those familiar figures are asked who they are. One answers: I am Sūrat al-Mulk — Tabāraka alladhī bi-yadihi al-mulk — which you used to read each night before sleeping; I am here to help you. Another: I am your ṣalāh. Another: I am the fast you kept on the hottest days, your voluntary fasting. Another: I am the dhikr you repeated each day — Lā ilāha illa Allāh al-Maliku al-Ḥaqqu al-Mubīn. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) states that certain people will receive no punishment at all in the grave: those who bore witness to the Shahādah, and those who repeated this particular dhikr a hundred or two hundred times a day. On waking from the grave the same companions are found again, this time as familiar helpers rather than strangers. In the same way, commentators of this hadith describe the Qur'an itself taking a form of this kind, coming as an advocate to plead on behalf of the one who read it, so that its intercession, its shafāʿah, secures deliverance. May Allah (swt) open every heart to the Qur'an, so that it is learned properly, with its tajwīd and its makhārij, and made part and parcel of the daily routine.