death

Death: A beautiful gift for a believer.

Death is a natural phenomenon for all living creatures. It is part of the life cycle. Eventually everyone will die. Still, the when-where-how-why one's death happen is remain unknown to us. Only Allah knows. One thing that we must keep in mind is that death is inevitable, and everything except Allah The Almighty of course, will perish one day. Signs of death can be seen all around us both directly or indirectly. At funerals we see people who were once walking among us being buried. During autumn we see the leaves turn from green to yellow and falling one by one, while during winter we only see trees without leaves, lifeless. So all things in this world will wither away and die.

My prematurely born nephew died yesterday at the hospital. It is considered as the neonatal death as he only survived for 5 days after being incubated. I know it would be quite sad for the expectant parents to accept the fact of their son's death but Allah loves him even more. May Allah take good care of my little nephew (even I don't have the chance to see his face) but I'm pretty sure that he is cute and lovable. May he rest in peace insyaAllah. My most sincere condolences to my dear sister and family on the loss of him.

"To Allah (Almighty God) we belong, and to Him is our return." (2:156) Imam Malik Ibn Anas saw the Death Angel in his sleep, and the Imam asked him: " How much left for me to live?". The Angel pointed to his five fingers. Then the Imam asked him: " Does that mean 5 years, or 5 months, or 5 days ?". Before the Imam had a chance to get an answer back, he woke up. The Imam went to someone who would interpret dreams. That man told him: " Imam Malik, when the Angel pointed to his five fingers he didn't mean 5 years or months or days, but the Angel meant that your question ' how much left for me to live' is among 5 matters that only Allah (SWT) knows about, and he recited the following verse from the Qur,an: "Verily, with ALLAH alone is the knowledge of the Hour. And HE sends down the rain, and HE knows what is in the wombs. And no soul knows what it will earn tomorrow, and no soul knows in what land it will die. Surely, ALLAH is All-Knowing, All-Aware. " (31:34) As we are so engrossed with our worldly pursuits, let us always remind ourselves that we shall taste death one day and what we have been doing to prepare for our own death story. The Holy Prophet of Allah sallallahu alaihi wasallam has said, "The most intelligent person is the one who often remembers death. Constant remembrance of it prevents one from evil and sin and motivates him towards good morals." The Holy Prophet sallallahu alaihe wasallam also said, "The remembrance of death defeats joy." Hence, let's prepare for death and die a Muslim!