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Is the body of the deceased being heavy at the time of burial an indication of the abundance of his sins?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

There is no Shar'i (Islamic legal) evidence regarding the significance of a funeral bier being light or heavy. What some later jurists mentioned—that the lightness of the funeral bier indicates that its owner is a martyr—is an opinion not based on any Shar'i, sensory, or intellectual evidence. The Permanent Committee for Issuing Fatwas has affirmed that the lightness or heaviness of a funeral bier is due to sensory reasons related to the weight of the deceased, and the claim that this indicates the righteousness or wickedness of the deceased has no basis in the Shari'ah. As for the movement of the deceased on the bier, it indicates that the person is still alive, and it is necessary to confirm their death before burial. Sheikh Al-Albani considered this belief among the newly invented innovations (bid'ah).

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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