Backbiting and reviling the dead

Question

Is it permissible or not to give a deceased Muslim who followed the Shari‘a the nicknames “Abu Jahl”, “thief” and all sorts of other unseemly names, and to make accusations against him?

Answer

Even if a deceased person really was involved in major sins such as theft and the like, even then to speak ill of him by mentioning those deeds of his is backbiting (ghiba) and haram, and the sin of backbiting a dead person is graver than that of backbiting a living one.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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