Aqeel Mahmood – The Reality of Death
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Brothers and sisters, today
we're going
to talk about
the topic of death.
And the topic of death is one of
those topics which
I think
most of us, if not every single one
of us here,
have at some point or another
heard
a talk
regarding death.
We've heard reminders, we've heard talks, we've heard
lectures
about
death itself.
And
there's many a hadith
and more importantly many ayaats in the Quran
where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala talks about death.
And
instead of just repeating,
many things which you may have heard previously
about
death and the reality of death
and just generally the things that we normally
hear,
I wanted to,
in this talk
discuss
and talk about
1 or 2 of these ayat, just 1
or 2 ayat.
And also I wanted to
have a look at what some of the
salaf, what some of the pious predecessors
said regarding death. What they said about death.
How they viewed death. What was their
mindset
with regards to death.
And
when we reflect on how they
thought about death, what they viewed or what
they what was their mentality
regarding death, what was their view regarding death,
when we study and we analyze what they
said
and how they viewed death,
then it should make us reflect about how
we see death.
You know, what's our reaction?
How do we feel? What do we think?
Whenever we think of
death,
the word death,
whenever we see death, whether it's in the
media, on social media,
or even for example when a close one
passes away or someone we knew, or we
hear about someone passing away, generally whether it's
a Muslim or non Muslim,
how does it actually make us think?
What's our mindset?
How do we feel whenever we
hear something or see something connected to death
itself?
And the first thing that I wanted to
mention with regards to death
is, as we all know,
from an ayah in the Quran, in fact
one of the most famous ayat in the
Quran regarding the regarding death, it's something which
most of us if not all of us
have
heard and we know it either in Arabic
itself or in English,
one of the most famous ayaats
on death. You could tell me what the
aya is.
So everyone basically thought the same thing,
more or less.
Every soul shall taste death.
And this is an ayah that we've heard
before
and we understand
to an extent,
okay,
the repercussions of this ayah
and the statement of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that any soul that ever lives,
anyone who is ever born
from the beginning of time,
from Adam
up until the last man who ever lives
before the day of judgement,
every single individual
will eventually die.
When he will die, that's something which only
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knows.
But if we look around us and we
reflect and we, you know,
contemplate
certain people,
you may have
friends,
acquaintances,
people you know
who are very very wealthy
and they just keep on making lots of
money, mashallah. Maybe Allah bless them with wealth.
And then you have other people who are
very poor. You know sometimes I drive out
of Morrison's car park and I see, you
know, poor people there, homeless people just sitting
there.
And so you look at this contrast,
You look at newborn children and how sometimes
we're,
blessed with children of our own, or we've
heard of
family members or relatives or friends being blessed
with a baby and we go and visit
them and we see these newborn babies.
And it's like the beginning of a, you
know, of a new life which Allah
has has blessed that baby with and that
family with.
And then we look on the other side
and we see elderly people.
You know family members, relatives of ours, very
old,
okay, weak.
And they've lived through so many experiences and
so many things have happened in their lives.
So you see
wealthy people
and you see poor people,
at one point or another
both of them will eventually taste death. They're
going to die at one point or another.
Death will come to them.
So that wealth that they had or they
never had
is something which
really if you look at it
from a certain point of view,
it doesn't make any difference.
And whether
a baby is born, or whether a person
has lived 70, 80 years of his life,
death is going to come to both of
those
individuals.
And in fact the newborn baby,
it may be the case and Allah may
decree
that that baby may die before the 78
year old man who may be suffering from
cancer for the last 10, 15, 20 years.
And again this is from the Qadr of
Allah.
This is also a sign that death is
something which is going to come to every
single individual.
Somebody who's famous, somebody who's, you know, on
YouTube and he's on Facebook and he has
so many likes and, you know, he's he's
popular, he's famous.
He's a sports personality. He's on the top
of his game.
And this individual as well, he's gonna pass
away. The person you don't even know him.
He's somebody who's unknown.
You've never heard of him.
He's a stranger to you.
And he passes away,
and no one bats an eyelid, no one
says anything about him because he wasn't famous,
but that person's gonna die as well.
And so when you reflect brothers and sisters,
it's something which every single person will experience.
But even though it's something which every single
person will experience,
it's
what Al Imam al Hassan Abbasari
said
that rings true. When he said that,
it's amazing how the one thing
which will
happen to every single person,
if every single person will experience it,
that's the one thing that people are most
neglectful of.
Meaning the thing that they're most neglectful of
is something which nobody can argue
or debate that is not gonna happen to
them.
But it's something we neglect the most. It's
something we tend to ignore. We don't think
about the reality of it, even though it's
gonna happen to every single one of us.
And we just prayed a janazah prayer last
night. There was a janazah prayer here take
that took place,
which is a reminder for all of us.
So
when we think about death brothers and sisters,
and when we realize that death is something
which is inevitable, it's going to happen to
every single one of us,
then in reality it's something which should change
our mindset. Meaning
it should change the way we behave.
It should change the way we think.
Because this is something which is inevitable.
And what's even more scarier is how we
don't know when death is going to come
to us.
As Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala tells in the
Quran,
that a person doesn't know
in which part of the world he's going
to pass away.
Not only does he know does he not
know when death is going to come to
him, but he doesn't even know where he's
going to be when death comes. How many
times have we heard about somebody who traveled
somewhere and he passed away while on holiday?
While he was visiting family and friends in
another country,
while he went for Hajj al Umrah.
So a person,
he has no guarantee
where he's going to be let alone when
death is going to come to him, when
it eventually comes.
And all of these things brothers and sisters,
it should make us it should change our
mindset because
when you know for sure death is going
to come,
it's like the one
who's been blessed by Allah,
when he knows that death is close to
him. How does he know death is close
to him?
Because of maybe an illness that's
that's afflicted him, maybe has cancer or something
else. And so he knows now,
I don't have that much left, I don't
have that much time left.
And if you reflect and you think about
those people who
they're they have some kind of terminal illness,
the way they behave
and the things they do are different to
the way normal people behave who are healthy.
You know, the way they the things that
they do and the way they behave is
different.
It's like for example, you know you hear
stories about
generally you hear stories about people who all
of a sudden,
in a young age,
they're told by the doctors that they only
have 10 days to live,
or half a month to live, or a
month to live.
Okay, what do they do?
They write down a list of things like
a bucket list
of things that they want to do before
they die.
And you know, subhanallah, when you imagine yourself
in that situation where you know you're going
to die,
it really makes you prioritize.
It gives you like focus.
And you tend to, you know, forget about
those things which are trivial in your life,
those things which aren't important.
You know, the arguments you had, the, you
know, the differences you had, the bickering you
used to do
with other people,
things that you were involved in where you
ended up wasting a lot of time.
When you realize death is around the corner,
you only have a week to live or
a month to live or 2 months to
live or whatever the case may be,
then you really start to focus on those
things which are important.
And that's why you hear stories about people
who know they're passing away. They they know
they're going to die eventually because because of
some terminal illness. They've been told they don't
know exactly when they're going to die, but
they have an idea of how long they
have left to live. They may survive longer,
but they'll have a month left or or
or 2 months or whatever the case may
be.
And these people, they start to write a
list of what they wanna do,
And everything else isn't as important.
And they waste less time
being involved in those things which aren't going
to really benefit them or anything which is
negative in their life.
And us especially as muslims brothers and sisters,
it shouldn't take us
a
certain piece of news from our doctors
of us
being told that we're not going to survive
or we're going to live for a certain
amount of time,
it shouldn't take us something like this for
us to change our lives.
It shouldn't take us
this kind of news for us to change
the way we behave, and change the way
we do things, and change our priorities.
But this in and of itself is a
lesson for us. It shows us that, you
know, when you reflect
actually on death, when someone's been told he
only has a few weeks left to live,
he starts to prioritize about what's important and
what's not important.
And this is our this is how our
mindset should be from the beginning. We should
be thinking to ourselves,
what is important in my life? And what
isn't important?
You know, what am I doing with my
life? How am I benefiting myself?
How am I wasting my time? What am
I doing that's beneficial for me?
And of course,
when we reflect and we think of those
things which are beneficial, we're thinking about the
akhirah, we're thinking about the afterlife.
Because that's what we're all preparing for, that's
what we're all aiming for.
So So when people have bucket list from
non Muslims,
okay, they're all things like bungee jumping or,
you know, skydiving
or doing something crazy, traveling somewhere to Paris
or to Tokyo or whatever the case may
be, they just it's a bucket list of
things I want to do in this world.
But
as Muslims, we have to reflect and think
about how we're going to invest in the
akhirah, what are we going to do? How
are we going to benefit ourselves?
And so death has a way of making
you prioritize your life.
It makes you realize actually,
I don't have that much time left because
I don't know how long I'm going to
live.
And so whatever I'm going to do in
the day, in the night, in the next
few days, or the week, or the coming
months,
I need to make sure that I'm aiming
for something, that I have some kind of
goal.
That I'm doing
deeds which will help me in the akhirah,
whatever those deeds might be.
Because once a person becomes sick,
and this is why some of the scholars
they will talk about illnesses,
and
it's one step closer to one's death.
Because when you become sick, when you become
ill, it's only because of Allah that you
may be cured.
And it may be that Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala as a result of that sickness that
you had, you may end up dying.
And so when you end up becoming sick,
whether it's something physical that happened to you,
you broke your leg or you broke your
arm,
or whether it's some kind of mental type
of illness or whether,
you know, you just had some kind of
disease,
okay, where you unable to to get out
of bed.
When you're in that situation and you're lying
down in your bed,
you start to think and you start to
reflect and you start to ask yourself,
if I was better,
then I would be doing this, I would
be doing that, I would be going here,
I would be doing all of these things.
If my leg was fine, I'll be jogging
every single day. I wish I wish my
leg was fine. I wish it wasn't broken
because I would jog every single day.
Even though maybe he wasn't doing that before
his leg was broken.
But now that he's lost that blessing that
he had, okay, he wants to make the
most of his remembering
the blessings of being healthy.
But he only remembered the blessings of being
healthy when he was actually sick.
You know, and that's why it's said that
a person only appreciates
the blessings that he's been given when he
loses those blessings, when he doesn't have those
blessings anymore.
And that's when you really tend to appreciate
those things. So when a person is on
his, you know, he's he's on his bed
and he's thinking about these things when he's
sick,
he's one step closer to to death potentially.
He could die because of an illness that
he's been afflicted with.
And then when Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala kills
a person,
he forgets about the things that he used
to say,
and he carries on with his life,
and he does whatever he used to do
before. Meaning nothing changes.
He just carries on as normal.
He doesn't bother going jogging. He doesn't take
up any sort of exercise. He doesn't do
anything else. You know, a person loses his
voice, and he thinks if I was better,
I would recite lots of Quran.
And then when he gets his voice back,
he just doesn't bother reciting Quran. He just
does whatever he was normally doing.
So a person doesn't take lessons from those
sicknesses that maybe Allah gave him as a
reminder of death itself, to remind him of
death.
And this is why subhanAllah Allah tells us
in the Quran
about the one
who on the day of judgment
he'll see hellfire.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
And if you could see the one who
is standing
before the fire,
And he'll say
He'll say, woe to me if only I
could go back and I won't deny the
signs of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. The signs
of our Lord.
And I'll be from those who are righteous,
from the believers.
And then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala he tells
us the reality of his statement.
Allah says afterwards
he says,
Allah says that
what they concealed
beforehand
has now appeared to them. Meaning it's they've
been exposed.
And Allah
says,
That if they did return to this world,
They would have gone back to what we
forbid them from doing.
Meaning, you know when someone becomes sick he
says I wish I was better, I would
do this and I would do that and
I would do this.
And then when they're healthy they don't do
those things.
When a person dies, he wishes to come
back to this world and he thinks to
himself,
our life you take me back, I'll do
this and this and that.
But in fact if he did come back
to this world,
he would go back to doing exactly those
things which he used to do in the
past, when he was alive.
Meaning,
whatever a person does in this world,
this is the only life he has.
And however a person behaves in this world,
it's as a result of the efforts that
he's made.
So when a person makes the effort and
worships Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
due to his effort he will be rewarded
for that.
And if a person commits sins in this
world, then this is the only life that
you actually have that you'll experience.
Apart from the akhirah which is permanent.
But this world and your life in this
world is going to affect the akhirah, and
how you how you live in the akhirah.
And if they were to come back, they'll
behave exactly
the way they did, and they'll go back
to what we forbid them from doing.
Meaning they won't actually change.
And this is something that we actually experience
in this world, but on a much lower
scale. Like I mentioned, a person becoming sick.
Or for example, a person taking a test
or an exam or an interview.
And he goes into the exam, and he
opens the paper,
and looks at the first question, and he
just starts he looks up and he thinks
to himself,
what's going on here?
What kind of question is this?
I didn't revise this. I thought it would
have come in the exam. He's asking me
this question. I never thought this question I
never thought he'd ask me this question. What's
this interview you're talking about?
And so you start to think to yourself,
man, I wish I could just rewind.
Go back
to last night when I should have been
revising and I was just busy on YouTube
or busy on Facebook and just wasting my
time watching films and TV shows. I wish
I could just revise
and find out the answer to that question,
and then come back and do this exam
and just ace it.
But again,
the the the way that you behaved
and the things that you did prior to
that test and that interview and that exam
is what you could do at that moment
in time.
The way you behaved, the things that you
did are based on
your experiences
and, you know, your surroundings and the things
that influence you.
So if you're influenced by bad things,
then those bad things will have repercussions in
this life and also in the akhirah.
So it's like someone doing an exam or
interview,
and he realizes that he messed up.
And then after the exam he regrets it,
and he wants to go back, he wishes
he could do it again. But it's too
late, he can't do it again, it's gone
now, it's finished, it's over.
And so the same is the case with
this world brothers and sisters,
this is a test as we all know.
It's an exam.
And the more effort
that you put into this test which is
continuous for each and every single one of
us, until a time that only Allah knows,
we have to make the most of it.
You know this world is like a revision
for us and also a test.
We're learning
and we're rewarded for learning about Islam.
We act upon what we learn and we're
rewarded for that as well.
And then we tested in this world and
Allah wants to see
based on what we've learned
and our actions how we're going to behave.
Allah doesn't bear Allah doesn't burden a person
more than what he can bear. Meaning every
single person's test, every single person's exam is
specific to him.
That his experiences,
what he's learned Islamically, how he behaves,
every single person's test is specific.
So if a person was
at a level
of the saliheen of the righteous, and we
ask Allah that all of us
hope to attain that level inshallah.
When a person is at that level,
then his tests are going to be harder.
When a person's iman is low, his tests
aren't going to be as harsh as severe,
as hard.
And then every single person's tests are going
to be different.
And they're going to be based on things
that Allah sees
that we love and that we enjoy.
So a person loves wealth, Allah will test
him with his wealth. He'll lose his wealth.
Allah will test him with lots of wealth.
A person loves to be to look good.
And so maybe Allah will give him an
illness, a disease,
a skin disease.
Just to see how he's going to behave.
A person loves to be liked by the
people,
and then Allah tests him by, you know,
something happening where his reputation
is tarnished,
falsely.
So Allah test every single person according to
his iman, according to his level.
So this life is a test, it's an
exam, and it's an experience for us
to
help ourselves, to improve ourselves,
so that we can do more good deeds,
so that on the day of judgment we
can enter into paradise.
And the scholars of the past brothers and
sisters,
they will talk about death. And death is
one of those things no matter,
you know, what you talk about in terms
of Islam,
death is always something which is a topic.
For example, when we talk about the Quran,
Allah talks about death as we mentioned some
of these ayat.
When we talk about
hadith, the messenger of Allah salallahu alaihi wa
sallam talks about death. When we talk about
fiqh,
there's a chapter to about
death itself,
and what a person should do
if a person is close to death. If
someone dies, what do you do?
So death is something which covers all aspects
of our life.
Because it's something which is inevitable.
And so the scholars of Islam,
they would talk about death. And there's so
many statements and stories
about what the
scholars would say.
Once one of the scholars was asked
whether or not he could teach somebody how
to wash a body.
This is up considering,
subhanAllah,
the stage today.
And this scholar when he was asked, I
think it was Sufyan al Thawri,
he remained saddened and he just started to
cry.
Because he remembered death.
He just started to think about death.
He just started to cry for the whole
time that they were sitting there.
Abu Darda,
he was talking about death
and he was talking about
remembering Allah.
And the connection between remembering Allah
and death itself.
So he said,
whoever
remembers death
because death is something which Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala will make every single person experience.
So he said whoever remembers death a lot,
his joy
and his jealousy
will decrease.
Meaning when a person realizes the inevitability
of death,
his joy and his happiness will start to
decrease.
Meaning sometimes you know,
we're with our friends
and we see something
on the internet or someone tells a story,
and we start laughing so hard, we think
it's the funniest joke ever. We think it
was the funniest video that we've ever seen,
and we start laughing so much.
When in reality,
it probably wasn't that funny.
You know, it wasn't actually that entertaining.
Maybe it was the people that we were
with that made us want to enjoy that
moment.
But in the back of your mind, you're
thinking to yourself, I just want to enjoy
this time, you know. I want to laugh,
I want to smile, I want to have
fun.
And so
you do anything you can, you try to
watch, or hear, or talk to anyone that
you possibly can,
just so that you can experience this happiness
and this laughter and this joy.
You know that's why people go to stand
up comedians, and they go to they watch
comedy shows,
and you know, there's a whole industry,
you know, of of books and
TV shows and movies, you know, comedy movies.
It's like a big thing, because people want
to be entertained.
But the reality is, if a person keeps
on, you know,
laughing at every single thing,
or he wants to always be laughing,
then that's
contrary to the reality of life itself.
Because in life you're going to have times
of happiness and you're gonna have times of
sadness. It's impossible for someone to be happy
all the time.
That's impossible.
You're never gonna be happy all the time.
Even the messenger of Allah was
sad at some some moments in his life.
Amal Husn, the year of sorrow when his
uncle and his wife passed away.
So when a person always expects to be
happy and always expect to be laughing at
things,
then subhanAllah
that can end up being a cause of
him being depressed.
And And that's why sometimes
people who are depressed, how do they behave?
They behave as if they're very happy.
As if they're, you know, the happiest people
alive.
Because they feel like they have to always
be happy.
You know, and the famous actor Robin Williams,
the comedian,
you know, he he was someone people thought
he was so happy, he would make people
laugh.
And then they realized he killed himself, he
was suffering from depression, all kinds of things.
So here in this statement of Abu Darda,
it makes us realize actually
that
there's nothing wrong with a person being joyful
and being happy and laughing.
But not to the extent that you actually
end up
thinking this is the purpose in your life,
to always joke around, to always be happy,
to always be joyful because it's never going
to happen.
And then when you start thinking that's the
purpose in your life, you're gonna forget the
akhira. You're gonna forget the hereafter.
And this is why the famous
hadith of the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam. When he said if you knew
what I knew,
then you would laugh little and you will
cry Allah.
So when you start to reflect
and think about death,
then you realize actually,
you know,
this enjoyment and this entertainment that we're having
in this world is just temporary.
So it's actually
a way of us being more tranquil and
more peaceful in our lives. Meaning we don't
have to always be excessively laughing our heads
off,
okay, to be happy.
Sometimes it just takes a reality check for
us to be content
with whatever's happening in our lives.
To be content with our lives and the
experiences that we're experiencing.
And the second thing about said
that decreases was jealousy.
Because you start to look around you, and
you start to see things that people have,
and things that people don't have. And instead
of thinking to yourself, I wish I had
what he had.
I want to get that.
And so you it's like a rat race,
isn't it? And then you start to work
more, try to make more money by hook
or by crook. You know, you start making
money illegally.
You start earning haram money just so you
can, you know, keep up with the Joneses.
Just so you can have whatever the next
door neighbors have, whatever your friends have, whatever
your relatives have.
And then you start to forget about the
reality of
life.
That death will eventually come.
So when you're thinking about death and you
see people that Allah has given things to,
and they're blessed with certain things, you start
to think to yourself
at the end of the day, Allah has
blessed them with certain things, and may Allah
bless them with those things. Allah has given
me certain things, but at the end of
the day all of these things are just
temporary, they're trivial, they don't make a difference.
It's just it's just things we're gonna have
for a short period of time.
And nothing lasts forever anyway. You know someone
has a car, he'll have a new car
in 5 or 10 years.
You know somebody will have a house, he
may move out after 5 years.
Somebody has new clothes, there's no point getting
jealous over the clothes that he's wearing, because
in a year's time he's gonna wear something
else.
So what's the point?
So all of these things,
it reminds
us that in fact
our priorities
aren't in order.
So this statement of Abu Darda really shows
us the importance of thinking about death and
remembering death.
Umar ibn Abdul Aziz, the leader of the
Muslims,
he said that
whoever remembers death
a lot
will be happy with the simple things in
life.
He'll be content with whatever he has.
He'll be happy with just the simple things.
And whoever speech
match
his actions,
his speech will end up becoming less.
Meaning if a person starts to prioritize
and thinks to himself,
death is something which is going to happen
to me, and you constantly think about those
things.
When you constantly think about those things, you'll
be happy and content with the simple things
in life.
Because you're experiencing things from a different lens
now.
Like I mentioned people who have been told
they're only going to live for a certain
amount of time. They wanna experience things as
if they've never experienced them before.
And they might be doing things all the
time. A glass of water isn't just a
glass of water anymore.
It's a blessing.
It's quenching their thirst.
It's it's a miracle from the miracles of
Allah.
And so your perspective starts to change with
everything around you. A meal isn't just a
meal.
You know, it's the taste and the and
the different flavors and the textures of all
the different types of food.
So everything starts to become different. Everything starts
to become special.
And that's how a Muslim should be,
you know, at all times of his life.
Every single day he should try to attain
that level.
One of the scholars he was asked or
he asked his students, he said do you
love paradise?
And his students say said who doesn't love
paradise? Everyone loves Jannah.
And so the scholar he said then love
death
because you won't enter into paradise
until you
die.
Meaning that's the first step towards paradise.
So when you start loving
death itself
and longing a person shouldn't long for death
in the sense that he should not hope
that he wants he wants to die, but
it shouldn't be something that he's afraid
of. Because when a person is expecting death,
when he's expecting death,
then he's going to start preparing for death
and start preparing for the akhirah.
One of the scholars he said,
no one loves the dunya
except that they end up hating
death.
When you start to love this world,
the more you end up loving this world,
the more you end up hating death.
And whoever abstains from death or whoever abstains
from this world will end up loving his
lord.
Meaning the more a person stays away from
this world, the more a person's attachment to
Allah will increase.
Because he realized this is actually
something which is temporary.
And I wanted to conclude brothers and sisters
by talking about
the relationship between the salah, the prayer, and
death itself.
Because this whole we've had a whole series
of talks and lectures about death and revolving
around death,
around the prayer,
About the prayer. And I wanted to talk
about the relationship between the prayer and death
itself.
And one of the things which we know
that the messenger of Allah SWAMI told us
about the prayer that's linked to death
is a very famous hadith
that I'm sure many of you know. Anyone
know what I'm talking about?
The relationship between death and prayer. The famous
hadith. Yeah.
Pray as if it's your last prayer.
Pray as if you're never going to pray
again.
So straight away we realize
there's actually a link and a connection between
the salah that we're praying every single day
5 times a day and death itself.
Meaning prayer itself is a reminder of?
It's a reminder of death.
And also the way we start the prayer.
Number 2, the way we start to prayer.
When we say Allahu Akbar, when we say
Allah is the greatest,
We're basically saying nothing is
as important as
the prayer itself. Aren't we prioritizing things in
our life? No.
We leave off everything, food,
drink,
you know meetings and
spending time with our family and working and
enjoying ourselves. We leave off everything and we
start to pray.
So the prayer is actually something that should
remind us about death.
And what's interesting as well
is that when a person prays,
it's similar to death
in the sense that when you die you're
closer to Allah, you're closer to the reality
of the existence of Allah.
And his rewards and punishments.
How is that?
In the grave.
When you're in the grave, reality hits home.
For Muslims and non muslims.
And a person will either be punished or
he'll be rewarded.
So you're closer to Allah in the sense
that you're experiencing whatever Allah has promised you
will happen.
But also what's interesting is you're close to
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the prayer. How
are you close to Allah in the prayer?
You can tell me. There's actually a specific
hadith.
In the sajda,
the messenger of Allah he said,
The closest slave is to his lord is
while he's
frustrating.
Meaning the closest you can ever be to
Allah
without experiencing death
and being in your grave, and experiencing the
the rewards of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala from
Allah
is actually
when you're in the prayer.
So when you're praying,
you're the closest you will ever be to
Allah especially when you're prostrating.
And what's interesting is the prostration,
physically you're the furthest away from Allah. Because
you're all the way on the ground.
Obviously if you're standing,
you're closer to Allah by a couple of
meters.
When you're on the ground, you're actually further
away from Allah.
But you're closer to Allah because you're showing
humility to Allah. You're showing your weakness. You're
prostrating. You're showing that you're nothing compared to
Allah. So the prayer is, you know, something
which actually brings you closer to Allah.
And also when we supplicate,
at the end of the prayer,
one of those things that we supplicate for
is to do with death.
Oh Allah I seek refuge in you from
the trials of life and from the trials
of death as well.
So the prayer is something which is a
constant reminder of death.
And we ask in Allah azzawajal for protection
and we seek his refuge also in the
prayer, from the punishment of
the grave as well.
So that's why brothers and sisters, the next
time we pray, think about these things that
we say. When we make takbir,
it may be the last time we make
takbir.
When we're in sajdah, we're the closest to
Allah.
So ask Allah for paradise. When we
in the tashahood position that we're making dua
to Allah, we're asking Allah for things that
will benefit us in the akhira,
and protection,
and ref his refuge from trials and tribulations.
So this is the link between the prayer
and death itself.
And now actually the prayer itself is a
reminder to every single one of us of
the coming of death,
the inevitability
of death,
and how in fact anything which will benefit
us, if anything will benefit us in the
akhira, it will be the prayer.
So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that
he gives us the ability to be able
to be strong in our salawat
and that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
reunites us all
in
the highest stations of paradise on the day
of judgment. And before I conclude, brothers and
sisters, as you know, this there's been a
whole series about the prayer and about,
issues related to the prayer,
And,
we have a WhatsApp
number
that you can
record and you can
join a broadcast group
on on WhatsApp.
And through that, you can actually
benefit yourselves and you can benefit others. And
Insha'Allah,
brother Humayun
has, some things that he wanted to say
with regards to some activities,
that we have regarding,
the the prayer itself.