He replied, ‘O Abū Bakr, do you not grieve? Do you not suffer harm?’”

For Paradise is pure, and none but the pure enter it, as Allah Most High says:

“You have become pure, so enter it to abide forever.”

An authentic hadith states:

“When they have crossed the Bridge, they will stop on a bridge between Paradise and Hell, where they will settle the wrongs they have done one another. Once they have been refined and purified, they will be permitted to enter Paradise.”

This issue is discussed at length elsewhere, outside this answer. Allah knows best what is correct.

What we have mentioned—that the dead hear those who address them, that rewards reach them, and that they are tormented by wailing—and even matters the questioner did not ask about, such as their punishment in their graves and other matters, may be disclosed to many of our contemporaries, whether awake or in dreams. They come to know these things and ascertain their reality. We have many instances of this. In answering questions of religious knowledge, however, one relies on what the Quran and Sunnah convey, for everyone is obliged to affirm its truth.

Whatever a person has had disclosed to him concerning these matters, or has been told by someone he considers truthful, benefits him if he knows it, increasing his faith in, and affirmation of, what the scriptural texts convey. Yet humanity as a whole is not obliged to believe anything beyond what the prophets have brought. Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has required belief in what the prophets brought, as in His words:

“Say, ‘We believe in Allah’”—and the rest of the verse.

Allah Most High also says:

“Rather, the truly righteous are those who believe in Allah, the Last Day, the angels, the Scripture, and the prophets”—and the rest of the verse.

It is established in the two Sahīh collections that the Prophet