Footsteps

Alhamdulillah we are doing fine. I know we haven't written on the blog for a while, but we've just been a little busy recently. Things don't slow down much, I guess, they just keep going. You keep waiting for the time in your life when you won't busy, but it never comes. Like Imam Siraj Wahaj says, "We'll have plenty of time to rest when we're dead."

Maybe. Depending where we are.

Speaking of death, my lesson today in the Muhaddathah book was about funerals in Egypts and the Arab world and the customs and traditions surrounding it. It's basically the same anywhere in the world; we visit the family of the deceased and try to comfort them, and we pray for the deceased. These days when we do lessons in this book it's not so much the lesson that's interesting but the conversations that we have about different topics related to the lesson are extremely fruitful, especially in this level. We've talked about stuff related to history, tourism, marriage (that was very fruitful *smiles bashfully*) university, and finally, death.

Death.

Like my teacher was saying, some people think that talking about death is really morbid or depressing. It is, if you don't believe in a life after death. There's nothing you can do about it, see, unless you know that it's the thing that separates us from our ultimate end.

My teacher was telling me that last week his friend's brother died, and he went to his funeral. Apparently in Egypt it is a custom in some villages that everyone pray in a particular masjid that was built over the body of a pious sheikh. This, of course, is abhorrent to my teacher, who always errs on the side of caution, and besides, this is getting close to shirk anyways. So to get on with the story, this particular young friend of my teacher is extremely pious; when he believes something, he does it. So he announced on the microphone (in the village, things are announced by microphone; nice, eh?) that everyone should pray in a particular masjid, but not in the one where the sheikh was buried. So everyone did as he said, no problem.

Next day, in the Jum'a khutbah, the khateeb vehemently attacked the boy's decision and said he had acted without any knowledge. Oh by the way, in Egypt, generally people come to the deceased person's house for three days after the funeral. Some people also have the custom (also faulty in the view of my teacher) to read Qur'an with the intention of sending the rewards to the deceased. My teacher says that that's not from the Sunnah; the Sunnah is to pray for the deceased. Anyways, the point is that that everyone went again to the young boy's house, and everyone was abuzz with the recent criticism of the sheikh. Everyone was wondering, "Will this guy relent and follow the customs, or keep it up?" The boy got up, and spoke into the microphone again.

"The Prophet (PBUH) ordered us to make dua for the deceased person, because now he is answering for his actions. So make dua for my brother."
And the boy began to cry.

A hush fell over the crowd. My teacher said that everyone suddenly began making dua for the deceased. Probably the way I told it was mumbly-jumbly, but when we were talking about it in class both of us had tears in our eyes. I remembered my grandmother, Allah have mercy on her. That's the reality. It's the last journey, our last step...

The only thing that remains is Allah's face...

~Ameer