specifically at the graveside—no respected scholar has ever upheld such a view. Rather, scholars hold two opinions:
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The first maintains that the reward of bodily acts of worship—such as prayer, Qur’an recitation, and the like—reaches the deceased just as, by consensus, the reward of financial acts of worship does. This is the position of Abū Ḥanīfah, Ahmad, and others, and of a group of the Shāfiʿīs and Mālikīs. It is the sound opinion, supported by numerous proofs that we have cited elsewhere.
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The second holds that the reward of bodily acts never reaches the deceased; this is the view most commonly reported from later Shāfiʿīs and Mālikīs. None of these scholars, however, ties the reaching—or non-reaching—of reward to a particular place.
As for the deceased’s hearing of sounds—whether Qur’an recitation or anything else—this is a reality. Yet once a person has died he is no longer rewarded for any act he himself performs after death, such as listening. Instead, he enjoys bliss or suffers torment on account of what he himself did during life, or because of deeds carried out after his death that stem from his own legacy, or because of how he is treated. In the same way, scholars have differed over whether he is punished for the wailing performed over him