It is narrated from Hazrat Anas bin Malik (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: When a person is buried and his companions leave him, an angel comes to him—who has a mace in his hand—and makes him sit up and asks him about the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): "What do you say about this man?" If he is a believer, he says: "I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) is His servant and Messenger." Upon hearing this, the angel says: "You have spoken the truth." Then a door to Hell is opened for him and it is said to him: "If you had disbelieved in your Lord, this would have been your abode. But since you believed, your abode is elsewhere." Then a door to Paradise is opened for him. When he tries to get up and enter Paradise, the angel tells him to remain at ease, and his grave is made spacious for him.

And if he is a disbeliever or a hypocrite, when the angel asks him: "What do you say about this man?" he replies: "I do not know anything; I only heard people saying something." The angel says to him: "You neither understood nor recited nor were you guided." Then a door to Paradise is opened for him and the angel says: "If you had believed in your Lord, this would have been your abode. But since you disbelieved, Allah has changed your abode from here," and a door to Hell is opened for him. Then the angel strikes him with his mace so forcefully that all of Allah's creation except jinn and mankind hear its sound. Some narrators also say that his grave is made so narrow that his ribs interlock with each other.