Acceptance of deeds

Assalam Alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu

The prophet (Salallahu alayhi wassalam) said "Three things follow a dead person: His family, his wealth and his deeds. Two of them return and one remains. His family and wealth return and his deeds remain with him"
Bukhari and Muslim

In this Hadith the prophet talks about how when  person dies three things will follow him to his grave. He says that the family and the wealth of the deceased person returns, however, the deeds remain with him. Now, unlike any other religion, Islam places great emphasis on the concept of 'befriending deeds', the reason is because your deeds define who your are, what you did defines who you where, what you do right now defines who your are and what you will do defines who you will be in the future, furthermore, every single action we do will be either a good deed or a bad deed and that will be one of the factors which determine your final destination in the here-after.

In order for a deed to be accepted the individual carrying out the deed or the deed itself has to meet three conditions in order to be accepted:
1) Tawheed
2) Ikhlaas
3) sunnah

Tawheed refers to being on true aqeedah, the aqeedah of Ahlus sunnah. The reason why it is the most important condition out of all the three condition is because you aqeedah (belief) is what makes you Muslim, it is what differentiates you from the Christians and the Jews. A slight defect in aqeedah can render all your deeds null because it can throw you out of the fold of Islam. So in order for a deed to be accepted the individual doing the deed has to be Muslim.

The second condition is Ikhlaas(sincerity). Ikhlaas is what creates the substance of the, let me explain. If somebody presents two blocks of gold that are exactly the same in shape and size, however, once you lift them up you realise that one block of gold weighs more than the other which one will you pick? The one that weighs more is the one that you will take because it has more material and it will be worth more! In that same way, ikhlaas creates the material or the substance of a deed. You can feed the whole of Africa but if your intentions are not clean/sincere then no matter how big the deed is it will not weigh anything on the scales, but even if a person was to smile at somebody for the sake of Allah with clear and sincere intentions then, by the will of Allah, it will be accepted.

The last condition is Sunnah. In order to derive maximum benefit from the action one should try his or her best to do the action the way the beloved prophet (ﷺ) because the way that the prophet (ﷺ) did things is loved by Allah. If one does not do it the sunnah way then there is no problem, however, the sunnah method of doing an action is the most beloved to Allah.