Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Urgent Need for Bathing the Dead Open Your Facilities
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Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim Al hamdu lillahi rabbil aalameen or
salat wa salam O Allah say you didn't know sorry, why the early
he or sabe he he my mother and my dear brothers and sisters,
wherever you are. The only reason we're doing this session today
right now in this place, which we've the will do, we'll do place
of the MSC which actually turned into almost like a mortuary hostel
facility is because initially when this virus hit, it was
unprecedented. So lots of people had absolutely no idea what to do.
And initially, they arrived on the side of caution, maybe a bit too
much in making this seem like an extremely, extremely deadly
disease. I mean, it is deadly in its own right, no doubt about it.
But over time now, over the last two weeks, there are guidances
available from many different health societies and foundations
around the world to say that it's not as bad as they initially
thought in terms of the deceased. So what's happening is because of
the initial hysteria, and the fright and the fear factor, that
this would even transmit the Coronavirus, the COVID would even
transmit from the deceased. That's why lots of our funerals are being
neglected, lots of deceased people are being neglected. And they're
having to go far and wide to look for somewhere where they can be.
They can be bathed and the hosel can be given to them. And then
they can be shrouded, and then they can be be buried. So what's
happening is that due to that initial fear and panic, and the
kinds of reports about how contagious This is, even from a
disease, I mean, it is contagious, don't get me wrong, but from a
disease, that there's been a mass fear and panic. So but over the
time, I mean, if you look at numerous different, for example,
the Royal College of pathology, their guidance on this, the
European guidance, the guidance from Australia, the guidance from
America, the guidance from many other places tell you that this is
actually quite a low risk when it comes to
the deceased. So from debt to living is actually very, very low
risk factor. You've got a bigger risk in being with other people.
So living to living is apparently more risky than a dead, a deceased
to a living person. So now what's happening is that many, many
funeral services have actually suspended their operations because
because of the fear factor, they don't want to get their employees
or their volunteers. They're in trouble. So they want to be they
want to be precautious with it. They wanted to be precocious. So
they haven't opened their doors, many messages which have these
facilities. They've closed down. I've just heard of a small city
outside of Birmingham, a small town outside Birmingham who have
facilities, somebody is deceased there, but they're refusing to
open up and the family or whoever it is, is being forced to now take
them to Birmingham, right here. It was a similar case here as well,
but hamdulillah monozukuri and his team, they've managed to really
rally the local community, they've got number of volunteers and we
managed to open up this place hamdulillah in Stamford in massive
Guba has been opened up, Medina Mercy has been opened up. And in
the last, you know, last several days, we've been able to do
several muscles just just yesterday, just today. And I think
two days ago, my wife when did hosel for, for some sisters.
What's happening is that even here we're getting petitions from as
far as South London even though they have facilities there, that
they want to come and do the goosal here because they just
can't they've just everybody's just closed down.
Well, a lot of people are relying on the fact that places like
garden gardens of peace or the other one, which is called Eternal
gardens, that they're going to take all of this burden on them.
They are overworked. I mean, I've had discussions with them. They're
overworked. They're overbooked, in fact, and the problem is that they
can only do you know, a certain number of whistles a day and a
certain number of barrels a day. So there's a lot more people dying
and it looks like a lot more people may die. unless Allah
subhanaw taala in sha Allah wills something different for us. So you
can't just rely on them. In fact, there's people complaining that
How come they're not, they're not responding to us. They're already
overcapacity. They're very sincere people, they're working very hard.
But they're overcapacity. They will not be able to take care of
this, especially if it gets worse. Right. That's why the massages are
going to have to open so the whole point of today's exercise here,
this talk to you today is really just to give you some get to
remove the fear of this, right because if you look at all of the
guidance is not as bad as it as it was initially thought. Yes, you
still have to be careful, still have to be cautious, and we've got
numerous measures in place for that precaution. And we're going
to go through that with you one as the courier is going to go through
exactly what changes have been made to the way we normally do
herself. Right and inshallah we want to inspire you and give you
that confidence that inshallah locally wherever you are around
the country.
through even around the world, and you have this issue that you will
inshallah open up and get volunteers to inshallah help out,
obviously, there have to be a certain, you know, between certain
ages, you take all of that precaution, but it's not as big a
risk as everybody has thought. So what you have to also remember is
that you can't rely on these two or three cemeteries and funeral
services that are still operating. Because we have so many, they
don't have enough, like, even locally, if more than one or two
deceased people come in, and you can't bathe them the same day,
where you're going to store them, people don't have refrigeration
facilities, right, there's only like one in a masjid. And we have
two more students here who are doing this. That's why it's very
important that you listen to this carefully, you learn from this, do
your own research, we'll give you links to, you know, proper,
you know how to put the proper gear on to be able to do this in a
way that's very safe. But alhamdulillah, what we've
understood, from a lot of the research we've done, and speaking
to a lot of experts on this, is that there's not too much to be
feared about. I've heard even some people saying that there is an
opinion in some method that exists that you can bury without a hosel
without a bathe, you know, without without a bath. Now, while that
may exist, and I hope we never have to resort to that, right,
things get very, very bad. You know, somebody will say, we may
have to resort to that. And while that may be something you may have
to do when you just get overwhelmed, right, rather than
have the body deteriorate outside put into the ground. That's an
exceptional exceptional circumstance, extreme
circumstances. I'm hoping that we'd never have to go there. And I
don't want us that we lose right from now that we've lost it
already that we've given up already. Right? You can do the
hustle. And even in the host or even in the bathing the Sharia
allows that you do the minimal if you have to. And again, I don't
think we're at that point where we have to do the middle nursery. And
that's why the gardens, as far as I know, they're not doing the
minimal only they actually is trying to do it according to the
Sunnah the best that they can. But again, we have that leeway if we
need to. Because just imagine those people who actually calling
for that, and I'm not clear. I'm not I'm not criticizing such
people, but I'm just saying think think about it, that if you or
your father, your mother, somebody had to die. I mean, would you like
to be buried without a hustle? I mean, your last rites the last
right by which you leave this world. The horror. And purity is a
very important idea in Islam a shot at the heart of the Chateau
Eman, half of faith. And we've had purity throughout. People have
been taking goosal They've never been there's people never been
without goosal never been without a ritual bath never been in a
prolonged seminary defiled state. Right? You know that? How can you
just bury these people without that unless there's an absolute
extreme need. And we're not at that point right now. Right, and
it can be done. And believe me, subhanAllah what you've seen
locally, is that you call out for volunteers. There's a lot of
people willing to help. But what you need is you need good
training, right? And you need good training, good precaution. And you
need a good leader, and a good supervisor that's going to
coordinate this and make sure people are doing properly so that
we don't meet more people at risk. We don't want to do that. This is
not some kind of, you know, that just just do it doesn't matter
what happens. No, everybody's careful. You know, we're standing
apart here, right? There's, you know, where we're keeping our
distance before, the idea was that body bags had to be kept sealed.
And if you open them, then it would release the vapors and so
on, so forth. But over time, right, many of the experts saying
that that is not the case here, you just have to be a bit careful.
In fact, many hospitals are releasing the body without body
bags. So even that's not accurate that they have to be in a body
bag. I know that I've got quotes from some places where the local
coroner is insisting on certain things. That's just a very
private, you know, private guidance that they're providing.
But in terms of the general overall thing of it, it's not as
much risk and insha. Allah, we have to take this, this is our
responsibility. So what we're going to do now is I'm going to
hand this over to Monica Zakaria, who's been who's gone and trained,
and now he's training other people and Hamdulillah we have lots of
volunteers. And they've done a really good facility, both in this
masjid, and the others. In fact, the other Masjid what they did was
they, they actually made a whole video of all the supplies, right,
and exactly what to do, and where everything is and how they need to
do it. Right. And my wife reached receive that, and it gave her
everything that she needed, in terms of where things were going
to be and the procedure to follow. Obviously, the hosel itself needs
another training, which he took already. So in sha Allah, a lot of
this stuff can be shared with you. Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim. So
what we're doing here as part of the services is when the body is
brought here,
the first and foremost the volunteers, they have to be a
specific age range with no underlying health issues.
No immediate family is allowed is permitted to come into the machine
premises. They shouldn't be self isolating anyway. But we've put
that down as a clause that we do not
Now, any machine any family members,
I don't want to go through the whole procedure but what all I
would like to highlight is what we do differently here. So once the
body comes out of the coffin, the casket that is brought in here, I
should highlight it's not always in a body bag. Many times it's
come into in a in the hospital bedsheets or some kind of
blankets. So the body is brought here, the clothing, the material
is disposed of. As soon as the body comes out of the body bag or
out of the the sheets, a flannel is put on the face covering the
nose and the mouth. The advice we've been given by officials is
if there is any risk of
disease spreading, it would be from the mouth, nose or from the
genital area. So those areas are covered totally throughout. So
what we do is we wear a pair of latex gloves and on top of that we
W out with with the larger glove, volunteers wear goggles, or face
masks. So there's two different types of face masks. One is what
the when operation theater, and also this one where it kind of
fits right over the nose and completely covers the mouth. We
have a biohazard bag where all the clothing everything is disposed
of.
Volunteers are given aprons to wear so most of the volunteers
just wear the standard apron to cover themselves. Some want to be
overly cautious so they've chosen to wear this larger one which is
also a medical great
but the main idea is the advice we've been given is you want to
just protect yourself intended no skin is visible, the sleeves are
full.
No skin is visible, so no water or no vapors anything nothing
splashes onto the face, just eliminating any possible infection
spreading. So when we washing them yet,
we avoid using a hose pipe or the spray gun because obviously water
could splash out. And if the water is too warm vapors could come up
so we use very lukewarm water. We actually use a bucket and a jug
and we slowly pour the water over the body. From the virologist, we
were told you don't. You don't you want to avoid excessive movement.
So we try to minimize touching or moving the body around while
squashing after we finished the whistle. After washing is done
after we put the bottle at the body as normal in a coffin and put
it into if he's going to the same casket we sanitize it, we put it
into a coffin and the body is then given to the transport to take the
body to the cemetery. We then sanitize the whole of the area
we've invested mashallah in very nice expensive equipment only
because it's got 10 year warranty. Otherwise I think 15 pound will do
it. So we spray the whole place down with some with Dettol and
with bleach, wash the whole place down.
Being cautious now we also cleaned the door handles everything else.
I should have mentioned these doors are kept closed right from
the start.
All the volunteers that are in here, they stay in here, nobody
comes in, nobody goes out just to avoid any any contamination
anywhere else. Obviously after everything is done, the whole
place is cleaned. The volunteers would carefully remove the PPE
dispose of it in the biohazard bag. We give them a sanitizer or
after the wash your hands with soap sanitize their hands as well.
And they leave everyone is instructed advised to go home and
take a shower immediately. In the last last week, we've probably
done about 1010 gooses almost male and that's male and female MCS and
that's here and also in Medina Masjid volunteers
with volunteers, we're in undated with volunteers. We've probably
got around about 30 to 40 male volunteers and we've probably got
around about the same number of female volunteers. So the
organizers are having to choose and give people turns to take
part. What what's been generally happening is
after those who have been trained, they do the whistle. And with each
new whistle, we get a couple of new guys to come in. Observe help
and learn it basically when hamdulillah volunteers wise as
Mufti Saab said, you put an announcement out there hamdulillah
the community is strong, people are willing to help people will
come up. Most of these volunteers they would not have ever done it
wasn't before. So how you're training them to do those have in
the first place. So we were quite lucky. Over here. In January, we
coincidentally happened to run a lucid workshop. So we do have a
lot of volunteers who are trained. But along with that we have got a
lot of volunteers who have come without having evidence it wasn't
at all. So for those we are actually going through the process
with a local alum or local Alima somebody will go through the pro
says of goosal, genuinely with them. And then also tell them
about the differences. Right now due to the COVID, the precautions
that are being taken place, they will have an opportunity to come
observe stand far back. As you can see, this room is very big, we've
got good ventilation. One thing we've been told is ventilation is
is key. The room should have good ventilation, how many people do
use to do one? So we'll use four people to do one with and one
person overseeing
anybody who's learning with standby back anybody who's
learning stand far back with with the mass consumer? And in terms of
the supplies, right? Where are you getting your supplies from, for
these special precautionary supplies like the goggles and
everything so to be honest with you, all the supplies we've got is
kind of standard basic available on the market kind of stuff, eBay,
Amazon,
we found out on welfare trust, mashallah they're donating at
they've got quite a lot of supplies which they are giving out
to different masajid and organizations who contact them if
they want even contact HomeAway for trust, Inshallah, the link is
below. Again, if you put an if you put, if you put it out there,
you'll probably find people from the community, someone who has
links on where and the equipment will come. The idea is the
willpower, the desire to do it should be the insha Allah Allah
will open doors and it will work out. So why do you have seen this
happening here? Of course, you know, it may not be sufficient for
you to you know, be confident to everything I mean, I think it's
pretty much sufficient as long as you use the precautions and
everything but mashallah what I have heard is that one of the kind
of Premier cemeteries of London which is called guardians of peace
that very much Allah 14 very proactive, they actually willing
to help the person who is doing that he actually mentioned that
they're willing to help people to train them for this you can go and
observe and train right and contact them about this so that
you can do your own hamdulillah since this is this movement has
started in last two, three days. There are now other massage in in
London, who are now in sha Allah, becoming confident enough to
Inshallah, start providing this service as well. So inshallah
other people will as well So alhamdulillah now you've, you've
understood how they're doing it here, Mashallah. The team here how
they're doing it, it's not that complicated Inshallah, it's not as
difficult as it sounds. And inshallah we'll we'll try to put
up some links to the World Health Organization, there's some video
demonstrations from them of how to put the equipment on everything.
There's a lot of guidance out there, right and there's lots of
people who are inshallah going to do this. So inshallah Allah make
it easy for you just one Hadith I want to leave you with because
which I've been thinking about for the last two weeks, I would say,
at least the last week, the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam
said wala houfy only loved Makkah and Allah Abdullah, he only he,
right? Allah subhanho wa Taala is in the assistance of his servant
of any person of the servant, as long as they're in the assistance
of somebody else. Now, you've been sitting at home all of these days,
what is it that you can do to help someone? This is actually just one
of the services that you can provide? There's lots of other
service of course, take your precautions, do what's what's
right, the social distancing and everything. You need to do that,
but you need to think that how can I help somebody else Inshallah, if
we are going to help this especially in such a huge right,
the last rites of life Subhanallah last rites of life, I'm praying to
Allah subhanho wa Taala that he gives us all
a proper sound, final rites before we die. And that way we're not
caught up in a situation may Allah protect us from being in a
situation where we have to be interned into the ground without a
proper hustle the hara even a prayer may be May Allah subhanaw
taala May Allah subhanaw taala protect us from ever seeing that
day and may Allah relieve us and deactivate this. This virus you
know, as he activated it's so easy May Allah he can he can completely
do that. So we keep our doors up, and we try to help others as well
and sha Allah working with that one and hamdu Lillahi Rabbil
Alameen