Accepted deeds of sinner

It is related that a certain man deeply sunk in depravity once passed away in a certain district of Basra. His wife was unable to find anyone to help her carry him, since not one of her neighbours paid any heed on account of his great wickedness. So she hired some carriers, who bore him out to the prayer-place, where there was no-one to pray for him. Then she carried him out into the desert to bury him. Now, on a mountain close by there was one of the great ascetics, whom they described in the aspect of a man waiting for a funeral. [Sure enough], he cameand prayed for him. The news that the ascetic had done this spread throughout the city, and the people were greatly astouned that he should thus have prayed for him, but he told them, ‘I was instructed in a dream to decend to such-and-such a place, where I would see a man’s funeral attended only by a woman, and there to offer prayers for him, for he had been forgiven his sins.’ The people’s astonishment increased at this, until theascetic summoned the women and questioned her about the circumstances and behaviour of the dead man. ‘As people know, she said, ‘his entire day was spent in the tavern where he occupied himself with drinking wine.’ See now,’ he said, ‘do you know of any good deeds which were to his credit?’ ‘Yes, ‘she replied, ‘three things. Every day at dawn he used to awaken from his drunknessness, change his clothes, perform the ablution, and offer the Dawn Prayer with the congregation. Then he would return to the tavern and occupy himself with vice. Then second thing is that his house was never devoid of one or two orphans, to whom he showed even more kindness then he did to his own children, and for whom he was greatly solicitous. The third thing is that in the darkness of the night and in the very midst of his drunknessness he would awake, and weep, and say, “O Lord! Which corner of Hell do you wish to fill with this foul man?” – by which he meant himself. And so the ascetic when his way, the obscurity surrounding the affair having been cleared. We must always have a good opinion of the deceased even if he had been corrupt, and to have a poor opinion of oneself even if one may outwardly be pious. This is because the last momentis a perilous thing the true nature of which is unknown. --- Taken from Al-Ghazali (Radhi Allahu Ta'ala 'Anh), The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife – Ihya ulum al-din