Death
by Dr Sherif Abdel Azeem
[du'á in Arabic]
Dear Brothers and Sisters in
Islam,
The topic of this reminder has a very deep spiritual
significance.
It also has been dealt with numerously in the
Quran and the sayings
of our Prophet (SAW). In spite of
its
importance, most people
rarely remember it and if they do,
they usually are not
willing to reflect upon it because for
some people it causes
some inconvenience. Let us follow
the
guidance of the Quran
and reflect upon it. This topic
is DEATH.
Death is a very well-known fact. It
has always been
indisputable.
No one has ever doubted death. although
human
beings rarely agree on
anything, they have never disagreed on
their mortality.
Death is mentioned in the Quran almost everywhere.
The word
"Death" and
its derivatives "die, dying, dead" is found more
than 160 times in the
Quran. The Quran has put a lot of
emphasis on death.
Why is it that the Quran is consistently
reminding the believers
about their own mortality while they
already take it for
granted?? To understand why we
have
to take a close look at
the verses which mention death in the
Quran and reflect upon
them. Let us explore some of
these
verses:
"Every soul shall taste death" (al-Imran 3:185)
The verse is clear and
emphatic. The massage it conveys
to us
is: Make no mistake
about death, it is a foregone conclusion.
Every soul shall taste
it no matter what. Listen now to
full
verse:
"Every soul shall death: And only
on the Day of Judgement shall you be paid your full
recompense. Only he
who is saved from the Fire and
admitted to the Garden will have succeeded.
For
the life of this world is but goods o fdeception"
(al-Imran 3:185)
This verse represents
one of the important Tenets of Islam
which is the fact that
there is another life after death.
Thus, for us death is
not the end of the world it is just the
start of an
ever-lasting life. The other fact
stated in this
verse with no
uncertainty is that the true measure of
success is not in this
life. Success is not having a
huge sum
of money, or a large
family, or a prestigious job, or an
impressive title, or a
degree from a respected university, or
a big house, or a nice
car, all these are nothing but goods of
deception.
The real success is to be saved from the hell fire
and be admitted to
paradise. Anything short of this
is a mere
deception.
In another verse which
conveys a similar meaning is:
"Every soul shall taste death.
And We test you by
evil and by good by way of trial. To Us must you
return." (al-Anbiyaa 21:36)
The message is clear:
everyone will die and this life is just
a probation on this
earth, our faith will be tested by many
things.
Some are tested by calamities and some are tested by
good things of this
life and at the end we will return to
Allah so that we be
appraised according to our test results.
The whole story of each
and everyone of us is best summarized
in these verses:
"We did create man from a quintessence of clay;
Then We placed him as a drop of sperm in a place of
rest firmly fixed then We made the sperm into a
clot of congealed blood; Then of that clot We made
a lump; Then We made out of the lump bones and
clothed the bones with flesh then We developed out
of it another creature. So
blessed be Allah the
best to create. After that, you will die.
On the
day of judgement you will be raised up again."
(al-Muuminun
23:12-16)
This is the history of
each one of us, CREATION, LIFE, DEATH,
and then RESURRECTION.
So we have to understand that our life
on this earth is just a
part, actually a very small part, of
the whole picture.
Also, we should not overestimate the value
of this tiny fraction
compared to our whole existence.
There is no escape from
death. Allah (SW) says:
"Wherever you are, death will find you out.
Even
if you are in towers built up strong and high."
(al-Nisaa 4:78)
No matter how long one
lives, nothing will save him/her from
death.
Strong towers won't save him. Progress
of science
will never overcome
death. Advanced health care
systems will
never overcome death.
Family, friends, money, power,
prestige, all are of no
avail.
Listen to the following
verse which describes our helplessness
when death comes:
"Why don't you intervene when the soul of the dying
man reaches the throat and you sit looking on but
We are nearer to him than you are but you do not
see. Then why don't you, if you are exempt from
future account, call back the soul if you are true
in your claim of independence? If the dying man be
of those nearest to Allah, there is for him rest
and satisfaction and a garden of delight.
And if
he be of the companions of the right hand, for him
is the salutation `Peace be unto you from the
companions of the right hand' And if he be of those
who treat truth as falsehood, those who go wrong,
for him is entertainment with boiling water, and
burning in hell fire. Verily
this is the truth and
certainty. So celebrate with praises the name of
Thy Lord, The Supreme." (al-Waqia 56:83-96)
One also finds in the
Quran many verses which adnominish the
believers of their
obligations in this life before they
die.
Allah says:
"O you who believe fear Allah as He should be
feared and die not except in the state of Islam"
(al-Imran 3:102)
Allah is commanding us
not to die except as Muslims. But
we
are never sure when
death will come to us. Therefore,
we have to
be Muslims all the
time. That is, the message is be
muslim
today, tomorrow and
forever, be muslim in faith and in
behaviour, be muslim in
private and in public. Be muslim
with others and with
your ownself, be muslim when at ease
and be muslim when in
hardship. Always be in a state of
Islam, in a state of
submission to your Allah, so that when
death comes, you will
be ready.
The same meaning is
very eloquently put in the following
verse:
"O you who believe let not your riches or your
children divert you from the remembrance of Allah
and whoever do this, the loss is their own. And
spend in charity out of the substance which we have
bestowed on you before death should come to any of
you and he would say `O my Lord why don't You give
me a respite for a little while?
I should then
have given largely in charity and I will be one of
the doers of good. But
to no soul will Allah grant
respite when the time appointed for it has come and
Allah is well-acquainted with all that you do."
(al-Munafiqun 63:9-11)
This verse is extremely
important to us. It states in no
uncertain terms that
there is no second chance-- when death
comes, it is over.
If you want to do good, do it now before
you are dead.
If you fail to be a good Muslim in this life,
you will be the eternal
loser because you will not be granted
a second chance.
You will not be given some extra time and
there are no
exemptions.
The same meaning is
emphasized in another verse:
"When death comes to one of them, he would say `O
my Lord send me back to life in order that I may
work righteousness in the things I neglected.'
No, by no means" (al-Muuminun
23:99-100)
It is the same warning
again, Allah is reminding us to watch out:
whatever good you might
do, do it now, don't delay it, don't
postpone it.
If you fail to do good now, it is your mistake,
you have already been
warned and all the loss will be yours.
There are numerous
references to death in the Quran. The
scenes of death and the
scenes of the day of judgement are
plenty in the Quran.
They are almost every where. If
we
suppose that we read
the Quran everyday, which is the sunnah
of the Prophet (SAW),
then it is very likely that we will read
about death everyday.
If we follow the Quranic guidance by
reflecting upon
everything we read, then we will end up
thinking about death
everyday. We have to ask ourselves
why is it that Allah
wants us to reflect upon death everyday?
What is the value of
such constant reminder ? The fact
is,
remembering death has
far-reaching implications in the life of
the believer.
Remembering death daily can and does transform
the whole life of a
believer to the better. Death
awareness
helps the believer to
set his/her priorities right.
Imagine a believer who
reads the Quran everyday, read and
reflect upon death and
the Day of Reckoning and then act
accordingly.
This believer will certainly be more altruistic,
less greedy, more
careful to the needs of the poor and the
needy, more helpful to
the weak and the helpless, more giving in
charity, more generous
because simply this believer asks
himself/herself
everyday the same question "Will
this money
I have save me from
death ?" Will the money
deliver me from
hell-fire ?"
"Will greed or saving the money for myself
guarantee me the
pleasure of my Lord ?"
Actually, it is
quite the opposite.
The more you spend for the sake of your
Lord, the more you
become closer to Him. Death
remembrance is the best
way to become one of those whom allah
has praised in the
Quran by saying:
"And those in whose wealth there is a recognized
right for the needy and the destitute and those who
believe in the truth of the Day of Judgement and
those who fear the displeasure of their Lord.
For
their Lord's displeasure is one against which there
is no security."(al-Maarij 70:24-28)
Death awareness does
create a caring, helpful, generous
believer. In short a
truly wonderful person. If death
awareness is spread
among a whole community of believers, that
community will be
amazing.
Death remembrance also
does give the believer a huge spiritual
boost.
The believer who is always aware of his/her own
mortality will always
be in need to seek refuge with the
Almighty.
This kind of believer will be very careful not to
displease his/her Lord
and if it happens that he/she does something
wrong he/she will be
quick to ask for forgiveness. repentance
will become his/her
daily practice since he/she remembers that death
might come to him/her
at any time, so he is taking precautions by
being always repentant.
This mortality
awareness will improve the spiritual quality of
the believer's prayers.
If in your prayer you remember very
well that someday you
will be a dead person, then you will truly
humble yourself in this
prayer. That's why the Prophet
(SAW)
once advised us that at
the start of every prayer we should
consider that, this
prayer as our last prayer in this life.
Repentance, prayer,
humbleness, self-restraint, patience,
charity, Fear of
allah,and hope, all of these are the
immediate outcomes of
death remembrance.
One of the most
important ramifications of continuous death
remembrance is that it
emboldens the believer to do Jihad, to
struggle for the sake
of Allah. For the believer who is
always aware that
he/she will die sooner or later, then
he/she will certainly
prefer an honourable death to
ordinary death and the
most honourable death is to die for the
cause of Islam, to be a
martyr of faith. listen how allah
praises those who
sacrifices their lives for His sake:
"Allah has purchased of the believers their souls
and their wealth in return for the paradise.
They
fight in His cause and kill or get killed. A
promise binding on him in truth
through the Torah,
the Gospel, and the Quran and who is more faithful
to his covenant than Allah ?
Then rejoice in the
deal which you have concluded.
That is the supreme
achievement." (al-Touba 9:111)
This attitude of
continuous death awareness and preferring an
honourable death to any
other kind of death was the root cause
of all the glories of
early Islam. Those fearless
companions
of the Prophet (SAW)
spread Islam to the shores of the
Atlantic and to the
borders of China in less than one century.
They led the most
impressive military campaigns in history and
their incentive was
very simple: The search for
martyrdom, the
most honourable death
for a Muslim. Today, it is the
fear of
death, honourable or
otherwise, that is making us by far the
most humiliated nation
on earth. Last Friday's massacre
of
the Palestinians
(February 25th, 1994) is just a reminder of this
humiliation.
At the core of all the ills of the Muslim World
today lies this simple
fact, We, Muslims, fear death.
Martyrdom is not as
appealing to us as it was to the early
Muslims.
We are not willing to sacrifice our wealth and our
standard of living
either. The evidence to this fact
is
abundant.
The Muslim World has betrayed Bosnia.
Muslims in
the East were not
willing to sacrifice their standard of
living and threaten an
oil and economic embargo against all
those who help the
Serbs and those who prevent the Bosnia
Muslims from defending
themselves. Muslims in the West
didn't
fare better, the amount
of help we provided to our Brothers
and Sisters in Bosnia
was just peanuts compared to the wealth
that Muslims in the
West enjoy. Muslims are not
willing to
sacrifice, we consider
donating $20 a "sacrifice." Why are
we not willing to
sacrifice ? For the same reason,
fear of death.
We love life so much,
we think we will live forever. We have
to understand that fear
of poverty and fear of honourable
death makes cowards out
of men. One of the casualties of
our
fear of honourable
death is that we become afraid of saying
the truth.
We are now in the month of fasting.
This is the
truth, but when a
Muslim ruler of a Muslim country said that
fasting is an obstacle
to economic development and it should
be abolished, very few
objected. When a Muslim ruler
described the hijab of
the women as a "filthy rag" no one
objected.
When another muslim ruler said that hijab was "an
act of satan"
because Eve had no clothes at all, no one
objected.
Actually, the only reaction to this particular
comment was a wave of
applause from the audience who happened
to be members of
parliament of another Muslim country! In
Islam, keeping silence
when one should protest is a sin, but
why no one protested?
Because life is so dear to Muslims.
Muslims assume they
will live for too long. The irony
is that
Muslims countries, by
and large, have the lowest life
expectancy rates on
earth !
To sum up, I would
remind myself and my dear brothers and
sisters that death is a
reality and we have to always be
prepared for it.
Please, don't assume that we will live for
too long. we usually
think that we will live for too long
especially if we are
young and healthy. This is not
true.
Young people die
everyday and for a variety of reasons. I
myself have 2 friends
who died in their twenties. One
was
about 24 the other was
27 and this one was very healthy
indeed.
i graduated in the class of 1986, so far I have been
told of 2 the graduates
of my 1986 class who already died. No
one has immunity
against death. No one is too
heathy to die,
or too young to die or
too wealthy to die or too powerful to
die or too famous to
die.
The question that we
should always ask ourselves is not
whether we are going to
die, it is what preparations are we
making to die as good
Muslims ? We should always be
ready, we
should always struggle
to improve ourselves until we become
the best persons we can
be. We should humble ourselves in
our
prayers.
Read the Quran more and reflect upon what we read
more, we should help
others, we should pay more in charity we
have to get rid of our
greed and selfishness. We have to
love
to others what we love
to ourselves. And also we have to
sacrifice for the sake
of allah by spending from our wealth,
our time, our efforts
and if the need arises by our lives. We
have to remember to
repent everyday and during and
after every prayer.
Finally, the best way
to remember death is to read the Quran.
We have to read Quran
everyday. This is major source of
spiritual power in
Islam.
[du'á in Arabic]
Ameen! Aqeemus
Salaah!
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