act he objected to is in fact permissible on the day of Eid. The Prophet ﷺ clarified this to him, saying, “Leave them alone, Abu Bakr, for every people has a festival, and this is our festival.” Thus Abu Bakr’s general censure remained acknowledged, for the Prophet ﷺ approved it, yet he excluded from it singing on Eid, which is lawful when confined to the conditions cited in this ḥadīth.

In that same introduction I alluded to other examples showing how the Prophet’s ﷺ tacit approval of a statement becomes a powerful key to understanding the issue in question. Among them is the episode of the Badr well, when he ﷺ called out to the slain idolaters: “O so-and-so, son of so-and-so….” ʿUmar and other Companions remarked, “You are addressing bodies that possess no souls,” and he accepted their premise but replied, “You do not hear what I say any better than they do.” Agreed upon. From this incident I deduced that, as a rule, the dead do not hear, basing the point on two considerations, the one relevant here being the matter of tacit approval. I wrote there (pp. 39–42):

“The second consideration is that the Prophet ﷺ endorsed ʿUmar and the other Companions in what was firmly rooted in their minds—that the dead do not hear. Some of them hinted at it indirectly, others stated it outright, yet both aspects require explanation. I say:

As for the indirect hint, it lies in the Companions’ spontaneous response when they heard him ﷺ address the dead of the well, saying, ‘Are you speaking to bodies devoid of souls?’ for in another narration from Anas…"