Remember death

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, it is customary that when we bury somebody, we demand ourselves of some important matters. This is not in the way of a eulogy. It is more in the way of a reminder to ourselves. I remind myself and you that every one of us, there are two dates in our lives. One is the day on which we were born. And the other one is the day on which we die. If you look at a gravestone, if you go to any cemetery, on the gravestone, these two dates are written. So there is a date which is written, say 20th of October, 19th. And then there is a dash. And then the date on which the person died, that date is written. Our entire life is that dash. Every single thing, every breath you take, every word you speak, every action you did, every action you wanted to do but did not do, every decision you made, whether it was good or bad, every single thing is in that dash. Every single one of us, no matter our ethnicity, no matter our religion, no matter our nationality, no matter our color, no matter our race, no matter our race, comes into this world without... without anything material. And every single one of us, no matter all of those things, also lives this world without anything material. But what goes with us is our actions, our actions, our decisions, the reasons we decide, what we decided, what we decided, who we helped, who we harmed, who we pleased, who we displeased, and so on. These go with us. Rasulullah , the Prophet Muhammad , peace and blessings be upon him, he reminded us two very important things. In one hadith he said that, he said that, he said that the deeds, all the deeds, everything of a person come to an end when he dies, or she dies. He said except three. Everything comes to an end when the person dies except three. One is Sadakha Jariya, ongoing charity, any act of charity that the person did, which continues after them. Whatever that may be, any good action which continues after them. Sadakha Jariya. And the second one is, a child who prays for them. A child who makes dua for them. And the third one is, any beneficial knowledge that they had, which they communicated and taught other people. These three, everything else. Doesn't go with them. All actions come to an end. In another hadith, in another, one of his beautiful teachings he said, that when a person dies, his or her material wealth stays in the house. Figuratively speaking, stays in the house, stays in the bank account, stays in the stock exchange, whatever. So this is one, one, if you want to call it a set of friends, for example. They all stay here. All my Ferraris and all my Learjets and all the Gulfstreams and you name it. Stays here. Stays right there in the house, in the, in the, you know, whatever safe. And there is another set of friends go with him to the cemetery. They take the, they push the body, they shroud, they take them to the cemetery. They put them in their grave. And they turn back. And that includes all of those who claim to love them more than they love themselves. I love my wife more than I love myself. I will give my life for, all of this is fine. We don't deny that. But no matter how much you love your wife, no matter how much you love your father, your son, your wife, they go into their grave, they will call them up. And they go home. And that person, whoever it is, will stand before his crate, will stand before Abu al-Adamey, would stand before the Creator, the maintainer, the sustainer, the protector, the provider, everything which exists, alone. You have won alone. You will leave this world alone. And it won't matter at that time when we stand before Allah. Who in this world we pleased, who in this world said this about us, who in this world said this about me or that about me, who in this world gave me this position, that position. Nothing will matter. The only thing which will matter is, is my Rabb, is my Creator, is Allah pleased with me or not? That's it. That is it. Every President, every Prime Minister, every King, every Queen, every everything, whatever, will stand before Allah alone. And minus all these titles, minus everything. And the only thing which will matter is, is my Rabb, is my Lord, pleased with me or not? And therefore I remind myself and you, every Janaza that we pray, Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest, how many we pray in this process? How many we pray? And may Allah have mercy on us. There are some people I see only when there is a Janaza. Whole year you never see only when there is a Janaza, that person comes up. And whether you like it or not, no matter how much you run from the Masjid, no matter if you never came to the Masjid, as long as your name was Muslim, as long as you identified as a Muslim, as long as somebody identified you as a Muslim, when you die, somebody will bring you here. Or go to the Masjid. So it makes eminent sense that well this is the incontrovertible truth. Whether anyone agrees or not, this is the truth. Death is true. The death is true. It will happen. When we prepare for this. That we prepare for this day when we stand before Allah. And we do and we live our lives in a way where when we stand, we will not need to be ashamed. When we stand, we will have a claim on the mercy of Allah. When we stand, we will have something to ask Allah for and say, Ya Rabb, I was weak. I made mistakes. But I never disobeyed you deliberately. I never denied you. I never challenged you. I never, knowingly disobeyed you. There's a difference between a mistake and deliberate disobedience. Deliberate disobedience is a crime. Mistake is a mistake. Maybe a terrible mistake. For example, somebody in this country, 20,000 people die of gun violence every year. The vast majority of them die accidentally. I was killing my gun. I didn't realize there is a bullet up the spot. I was trying to pull it out. I accidentally pressed the trigger and boom, I'm gone. Or somebody, there was a case where a guy was leaning back on a chair and he was sitting across a little table and his friend was sitting on the other side. He was leaning across the chair and cleaning his gun. He balanced over. His friend grabbed him to save him from falling back. And there was a bullet up the spot of the gun, up the barrel of the gun. And this guy's finger was on it. When his friend grabbed him and pulled him, he pressed the trigger. His friend died. Accident. Accident. But the same person, you take the gun, you put a bullet in the chamber, you put the bullet up the spot, you deliberately take aim at somebody and you shoot them in the head, that's murder. Exactly same action. Right? You pull the trigger, somebody dies. One is murder, one is very regrettable, terrible, but it is an accident. For the accident, you are not punished. You are, I mean, obviously, if it's sad and so on, but you're not punished. But for the murder, you might hang. What's the difference? One is done accidentally, unintentionally. The other one is done deliberately, knowingly. Same law applies. We disobey Allah SWT by mistake, something happens, a different thing. But if I know something is wrong, I still do it. May Allah save us from ourselves. I ask Allah SWT to fill our brother's khawar with noor. I ask Allah SWT to help him at a time when no one can help him except Allah and Muhammad. I ask Allah SWT to make his questioning easy. I ask Allah SWT to cover him with His mercy and His forgiveness. I ask Allah SWT, do you see, I ask Allah SWT to give some of it to his family. I ask Allah SWT to be with him when no one else can be with him. I ask Allah SWT to support him and help him in ways that only Allah can help. And I ask Allah SWT to enable all of us to take a lesson from this for ourselves and to ensure that our lives change from this minute onwards and become obedient to our Creator Jalla Jalaluhu, the Glorious and the Magnificent. May Allah bless you all. May Allah bless you all. May Allah bless you all. May Allah bless you all.