Death and prayer

(This is a something that I wrote on an email in 2004)


The blessed Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) described the walk to the mosque as a walk that will purify you, for us it is a walk of mercy, but most of us wish to stay indoors and pray there. We have knowledge but yet do not to use it.

We pray to God (the Almighty) but yet harbour pride and are not fully aware of what is happening inside us. How can we harbour any pride as we stand in front of our Creator and pray to him for mercy.

I saw a dead body wrapped in its shroud and I thought how can we be tough or arrogant when we came from nothing then we will go back to nothing. No matter how much we struggle with this fact, it is true, if only we could realise this fact, maybe, we as a nation, could really understand ourselves. When we pray, do we bow our heads in grief and sadness, for our sins committed and then we prostrate on the floor? Remember that this is your best position and this is the true position of mankind. No pride, no arrogance or anything else; we have submitted to the Lord of all worlds and that is our true state.

This state of prostration is the closest to Allah but we aware of this. Many of us don’t prolong our prostration in private or praying alone, due to the demands of life but what are the demands of Allah? He gave you everything and more yet you ignore this and continue to shorten your prostration, lengthen it, you will feel better inside.

The Muslims life is for the hereafter not for this life, we must use our resources for this, in the world, we are greedily grasping it and because of this we want money, power or position.

Why because we can see its result and so we grab it, what about the greed for the lasting rewards of the hereafter, why aren’t we greedy in that respect. Don't we know that all our endings are the same, a dead body in a shroud; buried in the Earth.