Death: What is Next?

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What is death? Is it a total annihilation or a transformation? When the soul is separated from the body, what happens to the body and what happens to the soul?

The phenomenon of life and death is the natural cycle of every being. As the birds fly, they certainly land and whoever has a commencement should have a culmination. None can escape his term and for everyone there is a term. The life in this world is terrestrial and is a life of turmoil. Nonetheless, it leads to transitional realm that leads to a celestial life. When man dies, he breaks the narrow confining cage of the body and gets liberated therefrom. Death is a mere substitution of one form to another, a change of outer garb. When death arrives man takes off his garb of clay and puts on the garment of the transitional realm. Then ascending from this stage to the next, he casts off in turn the garb of the transitional realm and puts on the raiment of eternity. Death is categorically a unique experience that everyone tastes once upon which there can be no reverse. Hence it is an unseen event that occurs to every being whether man or any of the other countless forms of life. However, we can have an idea of death by likening it to sleep, which is the lesser death, even though there is a manifest natural disparity between them.

Such an inevitable process of transformation, due to the ambiguity of its occurrence in terms of time and procedures, people’s perception thereof varies. The disbelievers who believe that death spells an end to all dimensions of their existence perceive death as a bitter experience that terminates all types of pleasures turning their bodies into corpses captured in a grave where they turn into ashes disappearing for ever. As for the believers, the matter takes a different aspect. They perceive quitting this world of matter as a form of progress and an ascent in the direction of infinity.

Such an understanding of death dramatically affects the believers’ life style. It shapes their life into a pursuance of exalted aims the peak of which is to gain Allah’s pleasure and shun His wrath and enjoy a morrow of peace. Since death is a kind of evolution, it is considered the most important of all as it, unlike all former evolutions, puts an end to the worldly affairs causing a serious shift. Evolutions former to death commence with the creation of man from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a clot and then from a chewed flesh, in proportion and out of proportion. Allah makes out of the chewed flesh bones and clothes the bones with intact flesh, and then He develops out of it another creature creating a perfect creation beautifully moulded capable of hearing, sighting and speaking. Then that fetus developed into a baby, then a young boy, then a man and then an old man.

As for the evolution of death, it is a complete diversion from terrestrial dimension to celestial one, from turmoil to stability and certainty and from the place of work to the place of reward. Death marks a dramatic shift from the manifest tangible world to the Unseen.

Allah said: “Man We did create from a quintessence (of clay); Then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood; then of that clot We made a (foetus) lump; then we made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh; then we developed out of it another creature. So blessed be Allah, the best to create! After that, at length ye will die”(23:12-13-14-15 Trans YUSUF ALI)

When death strikes man, by no means it can be postponed or alternated. Then his records of deeds will be folded and his reckoning will start. Death occurs when the angel of death called Azrael and his assistants seize the soul. Qatadah said: “The angel of death has assistants who seize the soul out of the body until it reaches the throat where the angel of death receives it.” Allah said: “He is the Omnipotent over His worshipers, and He sets guardians over you. At length, when death approaches one of you, Our angels take his soul, and they never fail in their duty. Then are they restored unto Allah, their Lord, the Just. Surely His is the judgment. And He is the swiftest of reckoners.”(Trans.6:61-62) “Indeed, there are stupors for death, how hard they are.”

The time of death is very critical teeming with shocks and surprises. Prophet Muhammad “peace be upon him ” is the most beloved to Allah. Nonetheless, He peace be upon him – welcomed death with the aforesaid sentence. Fatimah, his daughter, said: How distressed you are, father. In response, the prophet – peace be upon him said: There will no longer be distress to your father, Fatimah. The hardship of death is a mercy for the believers, for through it their sins are forgiven or their grades in paradise are elevated. Nothing can be compared to the joy the believers enjoy at the time of death. It is the moment when all hopes are achieved, when man be rid of time and place barriers and all mortal realms. O soul at peace! Return to your Lord, well pleased and well pleasing. Enter you among My worshipers and inter into My paradise. Allah said: Those whom the angels cause to die while they are pure, say: Peace be upon you ‘the angels will say to them; enter into paradise because of that you used to do.

Reference: The Muslim Guide Death and Eternal Life Resurrection, Judgement and the Hereafter The Soul’s Journey After Death The Day of Rising The Grave

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