The Wonder of Death: Permanence, the Final Outcome, Paradise and Hell

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 27 September 2024 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

O Allah, have mercy on Your oppressed servants across the whole earth. O Allah, establish Your religion firmly on the earth and open the hearts of creation to it. O Allah, amen, Lord of the worlds. And now: may Allah, blessed and exalted, welcome you and be pleased with you.

Glory be to Allah, how wondrous is the matter of death! This morning you receive the news: you open your phone as you wake up and find a flood of messages and reports. One reminds us of the birth and death of a very great scholar, one of the luminaries of knowledge in Egypt; another sends a message of condolence for a young man who had not yet reached nineteen; a third speaks of a woman who died while giving birth to her child; and a fourth tells of people who fell in wars and elsewhere.

Questions That Create a Struggle in the Mind

So you look at all of this, and you look at your own remaining in this world for another new day, and you reflect on how many blessings of Allah, Mighty and Majestic, there are upon us in that we have remained. Is this remaining a random, pointless thing, or is it a remaining for an aim, an end and a reason? Is our joining these dead near or far? Will our ending be better than the ending they were given, or worse than that?

These questions create a kind of struggle within the mind: Where are we headed? With what will Allah, Mighty and Majestic, seal our lives? How much is this world worth in your own self? And where does it end? So that you see yourself with no refuge, no escape, and nowhere to look except before the Lord of Might, glorified and exalted be He.

And whoever reflects on the reality of this sees that his striving in this world is little compared to what he will meet in the Hereafter: either Paradise or the Fire, either bliss or punishment. The wise person must then take heed of his condition, look at what is to come to him, and ponder his abode.

Examples in This Life

Glory be to the One who made Paradise a hope for every person of taqwā, and made the Fire a warning for everyone who takes heed. And glory be to the One who set before us in this life examples such as Pharaoh, Qārūn and Hāmān, and, in contrast, you have seen the prophets of Allah, blessed and exalted, and His righteous servants: these enter the Fire and those enter Paradise; these draw the anger of Allah, Mighty and Majestic, and with those Allah, exalted, is pleased.

I only wanted to remind myself of these words on the morning of a new day, in which a new lifespan has been created for us, and in our hands is work through which we hope for a standing with Allah, nothing more than that.

I ask Allah, the Most High, the Almighty, on the morning of this noble day, to grant us sincerity with which we meet Him on the Day of Resurrection, righteous deeds that we find in the scales of our good deeds, and sincere intentions through which we deal well with the creation of Allah, blessed and exalted. And I ask Allah, exalted, to extend our hands with those who call to Him, to open our breasts, to grant them certainty, and to instill in our minds understanding and knowledge of His Qur'an.^[1] O Allah, amen, Lord of the worlds. May Allah keep your day safe and bless you, and peace be upon you.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: Two passages were omitted from the text because the transcription was garbled in them: a sentence about "those who feared the world… and it chose others," including its mention of the sons who inherit and the partners, and some of the final supplications.