Once, I (Amir Ahlal-Sunnah) went to a certain area of
Karachi to deliver a speech. An Islamic brother invited me and several other
Islamic brothers to his home for hospitality.
There, sitting upon a bed, was an extremely weak old woman.
Old age had made her so fragile that the poor woman had shrunk into a tiny
figure. Anyone passing by would hardly glance at her with sympathy. Seeing her
condition, I felt great pity for her. I paused for a moment to comfort her
heart and asked, “Respected elder sister, how are you?”
She replied with words that, despite many years having
passed, I still remember today, and perhaps I will remember them until my final
breath, because they contain a profound lesson for me. In a voice filled with
sorrow, she said: “I am very ill. Pray that Allah Almighty grants me death for
the sake of Muhammad (صَلَّى ٱللّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَآلِهِ وَسَلَّمَ). These were her
exact words, and even today they still echo in my ears. (Praying for death out
of distress or in response to grief and hardship is prohibited.)
That elderly woman must have remembered her childhood and
cried over how she used to play, run, laugh, and speak joyfully. Perhaps she
remembered her youth and wept over the grand celebrations of her marriage, how
people admired her, how happiness surround ends her, how her children once
served her, and how magnificently she attended weddings and gatherings.
Thinking about such memories must have caused her heart to
sink, and she must have said to herself: “Now I cannot do anything. I am no
longer able to attend weddings, nor even funerals.”
In any case, for that old woman, neither happiness remained
happiness, nor sorrow remained sorrow. She only longed for death.
O lovers of the Prophet! Life is merely like a dream or a passing game whose duration is extremely short. Reflect carefully! Perhaps there is hardly anyone whose home has never experienced a funeral, or who has never washed a deceased person, or helped in washing one, or wrapped someone in a shroud, or assisted in doing so. If someone has not done these things, then at the very least, he has surely carried a Muslim’s coffin upon his shoulders, attended a funeral prayer, walked alongside a funeral procession to the graveyard, or helped lower a deceased Muslim into the grave. In this way, thousands, rather millions, of people have already completed this short worldly life and departed for the journey of the Hereafter.
No comments:
Post a Comment