As for what is to be done should he die while remaining in that condition—dying as a disbeliever, and we seek refuge with Allah—a Muslim may not assume responsibility for the funeral of a disbeliever. Rather, his unbelieving relatives must attend to him. Allah the Exalted says, “O you who believe, do not ally yourselves with a people upon whom Allah’s anger has descended” (al-Mumtahina: 13). Thus, if he has disbelieving kin, they are the ones who handle his burial. If he has no such relatives, he is to be buried away from the Muslims’ cemetery: the body is simply covered with earth, without washing and without the funeral prayer. He is placed in his clothes in a grave separate from the Muslims’ graves, purely to conceal the corpse so that people are not harmed by it, for the Prophet ﷺ cast the slain at Badr into a pit. Accordingly, his body must be concealed, but it must not be interred in the Muslims’ burial ground.

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Question: My family neither pray nor fast, and they swear by things other than Allah. I have been unable to reform them. May I leave them altogether, even though I know they have rights of obedience over me? What should I do? Please advise me, and may Allah grant you success.

Answer: If by “family” he means his wife, and she does not pray or fast, then he must admonish her, instruct her to perform the prayer and the fast, and to abide by the Shariah, fulfilling what Allah has made obligatory upon her. If she responds and repents to Allah, he may keep her. If, however, she persists in refusing to pray and to fast, then she is not a Muslim, and it is unlawful for him to retain her, because Allah says, “And do not hold fast to the marriage bonds of disbelieving women” (al-Mumtahina: 10). A woman who deliberately abandons the prayer is, without doubt, a disbeliever.

If she denies that the prayer is obligatory, her disbelief is unanimously agreed upon by the scholars. Even if she acknowledges its obligation yet abandons it out of laziness and indifference, she is still a disbeliever.