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In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All thanks and praise are due to Allah and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
Dear brother, we would like to express our deep thanks and overwhelming sense of gratitude to you for this great confidence you place in us and implore Almighty Allah to enable us meet these expectations and fulfill our task towards the whole Muslim Ummah.
According to the case raised in the question, it is permissible for the son to perform Hajj or to get someone to perform Hajj on behalf of his dead father. There are many evidences which support this in the Prophetic Sunnah.
In his response to your question, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the well-known prominent Muslim scholar, states the following:
The basis of acts of worship, specifically the physical acts of worship, is that a person performs them himself. If one has not performed them himself, then it is allowable for his children to perform them for him. The Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) said: “Your children are part of your earnings.” The child of a person is part of him, and he is a part of the child’s actions. He is considered as an extension for him after he dies, just as it has come in the Hadith: “If the son of Adam dies, his actions are ceased except three: A continuous charity, knowledge which benefits others, or a righteous son supplicating for him.”
So the righteous son is an extension of the life of his father and an extension of his existence. Understanding this it is then permissible for the children to perform Hajj in lieu of their father. If they do not perform it, then it is then allowable for them to send someone else to perform it for them. There was a woman who came to the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him) and she said that her father was an old man and was not able to handle the journey and so the obligation from Allah concerning the Hajj was not performed by him and he later died. Should she perform Hajj for him? He said: “Yes. Perform Hajj for him.” Another woman - as was reported in the Hadith of Ibn `Abbas - asked the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him), if she should perform Hajj for her mother who vowed to perform Hajj for the sake of Allah but had died. He said: "Perform Hajj for her. Have you seen that if she had a debt, you would have paid for her?" She said: "Yes." He (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "So pay it. For Allah has more right to be paid."
In another narration we read:“For the debt to Allah has more right to be paid.”
So, just as the son is to pay the debts of his father in the matter concerning wealth, the same is to be done for spiritual matters and matters of worship. Therefore either the daughter or the son can perform Hajj for their father or at the least they can entrust somebody to perform Hajj for him. But the one that will do this must depart for Hajj from the deceased’s country (i.e. the country that the deceased would have departed from). If he was from Qatar, for example, then the person must depart from Qatar and nowhere else. If he was from Syria, then the person departs from Syria, and so on. And this should be done unless the financial situation of the deceased is incapable of supporting this - that is if the Hajj expenses will be paid by that source. Whatever is possible should be done. And if the son will authorize somebody, using his own money, to perform Hajj on behalf of his father, then this should also be in accordance to whatever his financial situation will allow.
Finally, whoever would perform Hajj on behalf of someone else is required to have first performed Hajj for himself.
Allah Almighty knows best.
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