Iltimas-i Du'a: Difference between revisions

Iltimas-i duʿa is a request for prayer from others. Usually, those who go to pilgrimage sites or do an act of worship are asked for prayer.  

According to a hadith, Shi'a jurists issued that it is mustahab for a visitor of a sick person to ask the sick person for prayer. In addition, the one who is helping a poor person is advised to ask the poor person for prayer, as his prayer for the one who has helped him is granted.  

Some Shi'a jurists believe that asking for prayer from the believers is also mustahab. According to some hadiths, God advised Moses to ask Him with a tongue that he has not sinned with. After that Moses asked for more explanation, God told him to ask Him through others' tongues.  

Based on the verse 97th of sura al-Yusuf, some jurists said that asking for prayer also includes asking for forgiveness from God. According to this verse, when everything was revealed about the story of Yusuf, his brothers asked their father, Ya'qub to ask God to forgive them.  

Shi'a Muslims maintain that there is no difference in asking for prayer between the dead and the alive, thus they allowed asking deceased figures for prayer. On the contrary, Wahhabis do not allow asking the deceased, even the Prophet (s), and consider it heretical. They believe that the dead cannot hear the alive and that none of the Sahaba of the Prophet (s) did this. Shi'a scholars, however, argue that by the will of God the dead hear the alive and there are accounts that Sahaba asked Prophet (s) to pray for them after his demise.