Can You Make Du'a (Prayer) for Non-Muslims Who Are Ill?
Recently I returned from the trip of a lifetime with my family, something we were wanting to do from the time my daughter graduated from high school three years back. But you know, COVID times. We took our children (two out of three, as our profoundly autistic eldest son stayed home to be spoiled rotten by his four grandparents) to visit the three holiest mosques to Muslims - Al Aqsa in Al Quds (Jerusalem), Masjid Nabuwi in Madinah and Masjid Haram/Ka'ba (where we did our Umrah) in Makkah.
It was the trip of a lifetime filled with worship, learning of Islamic history, visiting of Islamic sites and masajid important to faith and heritage as Muslims. Throughout the trip, I had a list (as do most all Muslims when they travel for Umrah or Hajj) of prayers people asked me to make for them.
There were prayers on the list that people hadn't asked for, but I wanted to make as well. And some of those prayers were for people dear to me (and humanity at large) who are not Muslim.
Prior to leaving for the trip, we had an impromptu office discussion one day about if Muslims, we are allowed to make prayer for non-Muslims, especially those who are sick. The answer felt obvious to us (um, yes), but we wanted Islamic scholarly verification of this from an Imam, and Ustadh(a) or someone with appropriate knowledge.
And so our CEO Melanie put the question to her father, Imam Mustapha Elturk of the Islamic Organization of North America. This was the response he sent me:
It was the trip of a lifetime filled with worship, learning of Islamic history, visiting of Islamic sites and masajid important to faith and heritage as Muslims. Throughout the trip, I had a list (as do most all Muslims when they travel for Umrah or Hajj) of prayers people asked me to make for them.
There were prayers on the list that people hadn't asked for, but I wanted to make as well. And some of those prayers were for people dear to me (and humanity at large) who are not Muslim.
Prior to leaving for the trip, we had an impromptu office discussion one day about if Muslims, we are allowed to make prayer for non-Muslims, especially those who are sick. The answer felt obvious to us (um, yes), but we wanted Islamic scholarly verification of this from an Imam, and Ustadh(a) or someone with appropriate knowledge.
And so our CEO Melanie put the question to her father, Imam Mustapha Elturk of the Islamic Organization of North America. This was the response he sent me:
