What I find intriguing in your relative's argument is the fact that he tries to give it a scholarly color, attributing it to his studies and companionship with scholars. He, however, does not support his argument with any verse from the Qur'an or any Hadith of the Prophet. As you realize, in all religious matters, the source of argument must be derived from the Qur'an and Hadith.

Your relative speaks of his companionship with scholars, but does he really mean scholars in the sense that these people have studied Islam in depth and achieve a position of renown in Islamic scholarship? If so, he should have referred you to their works which would have provided a more convincing answer. He does not, however, refer you to any such works. Instead, he supports his argument with his own personal experience. Can somebody else's experience be sound basis for the formulation of our beliefs? I find that in conflict with the Islamic approach. It is indeed the Christian way of thinking. Christians always speak about saying their experience with others in order to preach their faith. But your experience can never give me the same feelings as yours or help me arrive at the same conclusions. Furthermore, when you realize that the same experience can have totally different effects on people, you are bound to conclude that experience is not sufficient to propagate beliefs. In Islam, we have the fundamentals of our faith clearly stated in the Qur'an and elaborated and stressed by the Prophet. When we want to explain our faith to someone, we resort to the Qur'an and the sunnah and we may later supplement the principle with examples of what we may have experienced.

The examples presented by your relative are of little value. What he implies is that a medium is essential for the accomplishment of any task, even eating. He considers that using our hands is such a medium That is not true. The basic thing in human life is that things come into being as a result of effort. No one can satisfy his hunger without doing the action of eating. That fits perfectly with the concept of action and reward in the hereafter. A person who makes the effort of eating gets the necessary nourishment and survives. Similarly, the one who takes the trouble of doing good things receives reward in the hereafter. The more conscientious he is in doing his Islamic duties, the close he draws to Allah and the sooner his wishes are granted. That is part of his reward in this life. According to your friend, the mere companionship of a devout person achieves similar results. He forgets that such company does not involve any action. In actual fact, he is requesting those devouts to intercede on his behalf.

From another point of view, a doctor is not the medium of curing illnesses. Otherwise, you would have had to go to the doctor for any complaint, even a headache. When you have a headache, you take a couple of pain killer tablets. A short while later, your headache disappears. Had your relative spoken of medicines, rather than medical people as the agent of cure, his argument might have been more consistent. To him doctor is the medium, which is not true.

As for the medium of sending down divine revelations, you must not forget that a revelation is a very unique experience. It cannot be compared to ordinary human activities.

What we have to consider now is whether such devouts have any role to play after their death. Let us first consider: how does a person acquire this position after his death and how do we know it? If the answer to this question is that his action in his life elevate him to such a position, then we are appointing ourselves as judges of people. We must not forget that Allah alone is the judge, because He knows every action and what was in the person's mind before embarking on such an action. . When the Prophet heard one woman of his own household saying about a person who had just passed away: He is not in a happier place than this life, the Prophet asked her point blank: "How do you know? I am Allah's Messenger and I do not know what He will do to me in the hereafter. "Judgment on people's lives and actions is something that Allah has reserved for Himself. How can we claim for certain that any person had the right intention behind every single one of actions? Until we attain that sort of certainty, we cannot judge the fate of others.

When people visit the grave of someone in order to ask him, or his spirit, to recommend to Allah to grant us wishes, do they think that the dead person recognizes them, or hears them, or knows the likely results of granting their wishes? If we answer in the affirmative, then we are claiming that the dead person is given something superior to what living people have. Otherwise, on what basis would he recommend to Allah to grant us our wishes?

Furthermore, what need is there for such recommendation? Is it needed by Allah or by ourselves? Do not people realize that Allah knows everything about them? If they do their supplications to Him directly and earnestly, believing that He alone can grant their wishes then what use is the recommendation of the dead people. Can anyone claim that Allah needs such a recommendation in order to decide whom He should help? To entertain such a thought even for the briefest of moments is a great affront to Allah. Allah tells us in the Qur'an: " Pray to me and I will answer your prayers." When we pray to Allah to do something for us, we are actually declaring that He is our Lord and the Lord of all worlds. This declaration , when meant seriously and honestly, is sufficient to get our prayers answered. Indeed, Allah answers the prayers of those who do not believe in Him, if they turn to him in sincerity. This is because of the fact that at the moment when they pray to Him, they make a declaration of recognition of his Lordship. This being the case, what use is an intermediary?

From another point of view, those devout people are dead. Let us not forget the authentic Hadith which tell us :"When a human being dies, all his actions come to an absolute end except in one of three ways: a continuous act of charity, a useful contribution to knowledge or a dutiful child who prays for him. "If you examine this Hadith carefully, you realize that we are in a position to benefit the dead by praying for them, while they are in no position to benefit us.

What this community does is certainly very serious. To start with, their practice is contrary to the one the Prophet has taught us of addressing our supplication to Allah directly and seeking His bounty and grace. As you realize, there is only one source for learning what pleases Allah. That source is His messenger, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Every Muslim is deemed to be fully aware of this, because it represents the practical implementation of the second part of the declaration which brings a person into the fold of Islam. To be a Muslim, one must declare one's firm belief in the Oneness of Allah and in the fact that Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was Allah's messenger. A messenger is required to convey a message, and the message is the one chosen by Allah. Therefore, any deviation from it represents disobedience to Allah. In this particular case, the message is very clear; Allah instructs us to address our supplication to Him alone and He promises to answer us: "Your Lord says: Pray me and I will answer you." (40;60)

Secondly, this community, as you say, addresses its supplication through the Prophet's companions. It is well known that the Prophet's companions have all been dead for more than thirteen hundred years. The Prophet says: "When a human being dies, all his actions come to an absolute end, except in one of three ways: A continuing act of charity, a useful contribution to knowledge and a dutiful child who prays Allah to have mercy on his parent." All the companions of the Prophet were human beings. This Hadith applies to them as indeed it applies to all other people. When a human being addresses his supplication to Allah through one of the Prophet's companions, that person does not hear his supplication, because he is dead and can do nothing either for himself or for others.

Thirdly, by appealing to the Prophet's companions, this community actually raises those companions to a superhuman status. That constitutes, in Islamic terminology a sort of worship. While members of the community you have mentioned may not be aware that they are actually worshipping those companions of the Prophet, the fact remains that by elevating them in this way, they confer on them a status of Godhood. This is indeed very serious. It takes those people out of the fold of Islam altogether. Islam is based on the principle of the Oneness of Allah, and these people are creating other gods from among human beings who were dedicated to the cause of Islam. Were those companions of the Prophet to be resurrected now, they would have certainly fought hard to bring that community back to Islam by convincing them that their practice is not merely wrong, but it contradicts the very basis of the Islamic faith.

Next, why should these people think that addressing Allah directly and appealing to Him is not appropriate, when He Himself likes to be prayed to directly and promises a direct answer? Do not these people realize that supplication is a mark of submission to Allah? When you humbly request Allah to help you in a particular way, you are actually acknowledging that you are in need of help and that He is able to help you accomplish whatever purpose you may have. That acknowledgment is a mark of submission to Allah and recognition of His attributes. An important attribute in this connection is Allah's ability to accomplish any purpose and the fact that He has power over all things. When a human being earnestly and sincerely prays Allah, his prayer will certainly be answered. I have explained in the past that Allah answers all our supplication, but He may choose to defer answering some of our supplication to the Day of Judgment. When we realize what He has in store for us by way of answering our supplication, we would wish that He had deferred answering all our supplications to the Day of Judgment. If He answers some of our prayers now, He does that because He knows that it would make us happy.

The first thing to be said about this question is that supplication will definitely be answered by Allah. We should entertain no doubt about that. This is because Allah states in the Qur'an: "Your Lord says, 'Pray Me and I will answer you.'" The way this statement is phrased in Arabic makes it a conditional sentence with the result, i.e. that answering of supplication is sure to come upon the fulfillment of the required action, which in this case is the supplication. This is, then, a promise by Allah made in a very clear statement which admits no ambiguity. Allah always fulfills His promises. It has never been known that what is promised by Allah has failed to come.

What is required for supplication to be answered is sincerity. This means that when a person turns to Allah and prays Him to accomplish a particular purpose of his, he does so with an honest and sincere feelings that he needs Allah's help and that Allah is able to accomplish that purpose whenever He chooses.

We often think that we are praying Allah when we are actually expressing a desire. Our action lacks the conviction that is necessary for our application to be sincere. We often adopt the attitude of a junior employee expressing a wish for the sort of promotion that gives him a big jump in the hierarchy of the company or the department where he works for. This is not the way to seek Allah's help. When we pray Allah we should feel that we are in a position of weakness and that He is able to accomplish any purpose we have without the slightest difficulty.

When we address our supplication to Allah, He may choose to answer it in a way which makes anyone who is aware of the situation admit that it is only through Allah's intervention that what we prayed for has been granted. I personally have experienced this. Indeed, there is hardly a human being who does not experience it at one time or another during his life. Alternatively, Allah may answer our supplication by facilitating the accomplishment of our purpose either through our own efforts or through an interaction of a variety of factors. I will give you an example.

A friend of mine has a son who stammers when he speaks. His speech defect has caused him such distress as other children laugh at his difficulty. One day he prayed Allah with much sincerity to cure his defect. Within a few days, his father learned that an excellent speech therapist was visiting the small town in which they lived and intending to stay for several months. The father arranged that the boy gets what he needed of professional help. The speech therapist told the boy that he can only guide him and that the boy must work hard to help himself by doing the exercises he was going to give him each session. In this case, the boy can only blame himself if he fails to take advantage of what he has been offered. If he follows the speech therapist's guidance and does the exercises he is given, he will almost probably be cured of his defect within a matter of months. If he fails to do so, he cannot say that Allah has not answered his supplication. The fact that this arrangement could ever be made is a demonstration of answering the boy's sincere supplication.

It is also important to remember something that the Prophet has told us about supplication. He says that Allah will definitely answer all our prayers, but [only] some prayers we will see answered in this life. Allah may choose to defer the answering of other supplications so that He rewards us for it in the life to come. The Prophet also explains that when we come to see the sort of reward we will have as a result of that postponement of answering our prayers, we would wish that Allah had not answered any of our supplication in this life and that He had deferred it all to the life to come. Hence, we should not be hasty. Some people may ask here: "What is the use of postponing the answering of a supplication when we need the thing that we are praying for here in this life?" The answer is that Allah postpones answering our supplication for our own good. As His knowledge is perfect and absolute, and as it encompasses the future as well as the present and the past, He knows perfectly well what effect the answering of any particular supplication will have on our lives. Take for example the case of a person who prays Allah to make him very wealthy. Now look at wealthy people and you are sure to find that many of them do not make the sort of use of their wealth which will improve their position in the life to come. On the contrary, many are the ones who use their wealth in ways which displease Allah. This means that their wealth is not a blessing but something that may condemn them in the hereafter. If Allah knows that the person who is making this supplication is of the latter type and He does not answer his supplication immediately but defers it to the hereafter, He is actually giving him more than what he has prayed for. He is giving him protection against the errors He knows that the man will be committing when he is wealthy and He is rewarding him for his supplication in the hereafter.

Moreover, when we look at the blessing with which Allah has favored us, we are bound to conclude that even if we are suffering a great deal of hardship, we enjoy much of Allah's blessings. We should be grateful to Him and we should pray Him all the time. Besides, supplication is part of our worship. Indeed, the Prophet described it as the heart of worship. It is appropriate to ask ourselves whether we worship Allah simply because it is beneficial to us? If so, we have to change our attitude so that we make our worship a fulfillment of our duty and a gesture expressing our gratitude to Allah for what He has given us. When we address our supplication to Allah, it is we who benefit by that. We are indeed acknowledging His Lordship and this acknowledgment is bound to bring us good reward.

What I have said about the postponement of the answering of a prayer may not sound very appealing to some people. They want their wishes which they include in their supplication, fulfilled here and now. This is due to the fact that most people tend to think of this life as the be all and end all. A Muslim should have a much wider view of life so as to include the life to come as an undoubted reality. Moreover, a Muslim does not think of the life to come as something remote, but as something coming soon. No one knows when his time of death arrives. To a Muslim, this could be much close than anyone can think.

When he dies, a human being moves from one stage of his life to the next stage, where he will certainly have the reward for his supplication. Besides, when anyone of us thinks of the blessing Allah has already given him, he is bound to feel that Allah has bestowed His grace in abundance on him. Let him reflect that what he has is more than enough for him. What he asks may lead him astray. That would be a net loss to him.

As far as the case of the reader's brother, he must accept with conviction that what the Prophet has said is true. If he is in doubt, then his supplication may remain unanswered. Besides, the Prophet said that if you use this supplication regularly, whatever happens to you will not harm you. The Hadith does not say that no harm will happen, but whatever happens will not harm the person. Here we have to take "harm" in a broader sense. Something may happen to a person which he dislikes, but he will be able to repel its harmful effects or reduce them to an absolute minimum. Once more, much depends on his conviction that what the Prophet said is true. We have to try to attain the sort of conviction the Prophet's companion had. I will conclude with an example illustrating this point.

Once Abu Ad-Dardaa', a companion of the Prophet, was told that his house was burned down. He said, "it has not." When he went with those who gave him that report to his place, they found that the area had suffered a big fire very close to his house, but the house itself was safe. They asked him how did he know that his house was not burned down. He said, "because I said this morning, like I do every morning, a certain supplication I heard from the Prophet who told us that when we say it, we will be spared all harm to ourselves and our property. Ever since, I have been saying this supplication every morning."