5 – Below are a few excerpts from the scholars on this issue:

• The noble Companion Jarīr ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Bajalī (may Allah be pleased with him) said, “We used to regard gathering at the home of the deceased and their preparing food for the people as a form of wailing.” Reported by Ahmad and Ibn Mājah, whose chain of transmission is trustworthy.

• Imam Ahmad stated, “It is a practice of the Age of Ignorance.”

• Al-Ṭurṭūshī said, “As for the maʾtam (the mourning gathering), it is prohibited by unanimous agreement of the scholars. A maʾtam is a get-together held because of a calamity, and it is a reprehensible innovation for which no evidence has been transmitted—likewise the later gatherings held on the second, third, fourth, or seventh day, or after a month or a year.”

• Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah remarked, “The bereaved family’s assembling people for a meal so that they may recite for the deceased was unknown to the early generations. Various groups of scholars have disapproved of it for several reasons, and the Salaf counted it among the acts of lamentation.”

6 – The same shaykh also said, “Distributing charity together with the funeral is a detested innovation. No act of worship is legislated at graves—neither giving charity nor anything else, such as slaughtering or sacrificing an animal there. Even if someone has vowed to do that, or a waqf stipulates it, the condition is invalid and it is forbidden to carry it out.”

Benefit:
Al-Mughnī, al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr and other works state, “Should circumstances genuinely require the bereaved family to prepare food, it is permissible—for people may arrive from outlying villages to attend the funeral and stay overnight, and the family have no option but to feed them.”