individual cases are established, we say: the basic principle is permissibility unless evidence establishes prohibition. If there were evidence for prohibition, we would say that these reported cases constitute exceptions to that prohibition. But nothing has been reported to indicate that drawing closer to Allah Most High through an act of devotion whose reward is given to another is forbidden.

If someone asks: How do we answer Allah Most High’s statement, “And that a person shall have nothing but what he strives for”? [al-Najm]

The answer is that anyone who reads the verses will know what is intended. Allah Most High says:

“Or has he not been informed of what was in the scrolls of Moses, and of Abraham, who fulfilled his obligations: that no bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another, and that a person shall have nothing but what he strives for?” [al-Najm]

Just as another person’s sin is not borne by you, neither is another person’s striving made yours.

The meaning is that your own striving will not be lost, and that you will not bear another’s sin. But if someone strives on your behalf, what prevents that? Does not the one who wrongs others have some of his good deeds taken and added to the good deeds of those he wronged, even though they did not strive for them?

Thus, just as a person does not bear another’s sin, he does not possess another’s striving; he has only what he himself has striven for. As for someone else striving on his behalf, there is nothing to prevent it. The verse does not indicate that another person’s striving on one’s behalf is prohibited; rather, it indicates that one possesses nothing of another’s striving, just as one bears nothing of another’s sin.

What remains to be considered is whether the common people’s practice today is correct. Their practice is that they do nothing without assigning its reward to their parents, paternal uncles, maternal uncles, and the like. Even in Ramadan, they read the Quran, and the first