A Question raised by a member of the Jamat
“A member of my family would like to cremated, when he dies. And would like to have all our Duas and Chantas to be performed. Is this allowed in our Religion. “
The following was my response. I ahve also asked ITREB UK
Cremation is not permitted in Islam. Burial is prescribed in Islam, except in 2 instances.
1 If the body has communicable diseases, e.g. an epidemic/Pandemic, (then cremation/burning is permitted) Or secondly
2 Death at sea ( burial at sea is then permitted)
In Farmans and in the Quran it is not said specifically that cremation is not permitted. We therefore have to rely on Al Hadiths and Farmans. In our tariqah burial with funeral rites Chantas & Dua are prescribed by Imams which includes the Duas, after the burial and to continue to visit the grave & pray for 40 days. (Chirag Roshan is now accepted by Hazar Imam)
(Bearing in mind our Leaders do not give us all the Farmans and do not say what Imam has said. And they have stopped explaining and do not respond officially. Informally they do)
Cremation is not permitted. You must explain to your brother in law and ask an Al Waez to speak to him in more detail. If he still wishes and insists to be cremated, then Mukhis must perform and administer all our other Ismaili funeral rites including Chantas, & the Duas. (These are also to be given to all, even if excommunicated, provided he or she has not accepted another faith. And Imam has said there is no compulsion in our faith.
Mukhis & AlWaez should also be happy to also perform and recite the final Dua (Fatihah), after a cremation. In any event the final Dua & Fatihah must be recited after a cremation (as with burial at sea and in a case of communicable diseases). You must ensure this prayer is recited.
We have been reassured by our Imams that our soul is eternal and lives on. Our soul finally leaves our body, after the burial & final prayers by the grave (Fatihah & kul Fatihah). Nur e Imam, will be there, as always, during our journey to become one with He who is above all else - (asal ma wasl)
We Ismailies, believe in a personal resurrection & one which will be collective. Nur e Imam will be there with us, as always. Sunnis believe there will only be one collective resurrection on the final day of judgement.
Organ donation in order to save another life, is permitted.
The following and attached may help you & your brother I law..
When we die and become dust and bones, shall we be resurrected? (23:82; 37:16; 56:47)” "When we have died and become dust and bones, are we indeed to be resurrected”
We cannot become dust and bones if we are cremated. If we are cremated, we can and will still be resurrected to go through the account for our deeds and Niyats.
Prophet Mohammed has said that not even a bone of the body of dead must be broken before or after death.
Allah has given us clear guidelines on how to bury our dead; what we do not do, what we have to do, and what is permitted to do. And the teachings of Islam includes treating the dead with respect in a way that will fit the dead person. We wash him, cleanse him, and put a white shroud around him, then we offer a funeral prayer (janazah) and pray forgiveness for him. Allah does not include cremation as a part of it. Thus we are not permitted to do so.
Allah says:"And indeed We have honoured the Children of Adam" [17:70] Cremation is deemed as an act of dishonor to the dead. We derive at this by what we call Qiyas alawla, elevated analogy. Meaning, if we are not permitted to trample on the dead body, or sit on the actual grave itself, then more so with burning the body to ashes!
Regarding cremation, the general view is that the aspect of burying and what is allowable is based what was the norm at the time of the Prophet Muhammad. The non-burial was associated with specific pagan acts. Allah says that even from a fingerprint we will be put together. See ayah 75:4, plus several others that show that no matter how much the bodies have decayed, they will be remade, also Q17:49, 17:98, 23:35, etc. This is obviously an expression of explanation. Whether we burn or don't burn our dead, Allah will resurrect us as He wishes.
Now there is a hadith that says the injury to the dead is like the injury to the living, and several other ahadith that describe conditions in the grave.
The Grave
The overwhelming amount – if not all – of the hadith data on death, the grave and the interim between death and resurrection is remarkably similar to the Hibbut ha-Kever and Intermediate State of Jewish and Christian lore. In this chapter, we will examine the subject that S.G.F. Brandon notes was "probably the strangest and the most notable development of Muslim faith and practice"(1967:147). The lack of harmony between the Qur'an and Hadith on the subject led him to opine that the latter "certainly presupposes a view of the condition of death which differs from that which Muhammad appears to have held…” (ibid.). Several names have been given to this genre of Muslim writings – among them ahwal al-Qabr (the conditions in the grave) and adhab al-Qabr (punishment of the grave).
The Qur'anic View of Death
Every soul, we are told in Q3:185, must taste of death. The death is seen by the Qur'an as a barrier that does not allow any possibility of return to the world of the living until the day when all the souls will be resurrected: "… behind them is a barrier (barzakh) until the day when they are resurrected."(Q23:100) The later muhadithun gradually added to the concept of the word barzakh until it came to be understood as simultaneously the time and place wherein every individual must wait between death and resurrection (Smith & Haddad, 1981:8). This development is evidenced by there being no references to barzakh in the canonical traditions (Eklund, 1941:22), even though, as noted earlier, they contain a vast amount of material on the intermediate state.
The probable authenticity of the hadith about barzakh can only be established if it can be proven that death (Mawt) – according to the Qur'an – is a condition wherein there is some form of consciousness and perception. Therefore, we will examine the usage of this word, which with its derivative forms, occurs 165 times throughout the Qur'an ('Abd al-Baqi, 1982: 678-80). The following verses are examples from which we can attempt to form our answer:
How can you reject Allah seeing that you were dead, and He gave you life, then He will cause you to die, and will bring you again to life, and to Him will you return. (2:28)
Thou bringeth the living out of the dead, and the dead out of the living… (3:27)
The human says: What! When I am dead, shall I be raised up alive? (19:66)
They say: When we die and become dust and bones, shall we be resurrected? (23:82; 37:16; 56:47)
Truly you cannot make the dead hear… (27:80, 30:52)
Nor are the living equal with the dead. Allah can make those whom He wishes listen. But you cannot make those who are in the graves hear. (35:22)
Even if We did send unto them angels, and the dead did speak unto them… they are not the ones to believe. (6:111)
Those who listen to be sure will accept; As to the dead, Allah will resurrect them; then will they be returned to Him. (6:36)
Do they not see that Allah who created the heavens and the earth and never tired from their creation is able to give life to the dead? Indeed, He has power over all things. (46:33)
These are things dead, lifeless. They have no perception of when they will be raised up. (16:21)
Can the person who was dead, to whom We gave life and a light whereby s/he can walk among human beings be like the person who is in the depths of darkness, from which s/he can never come out? (6:122)
Say: It is Allah who gives you life and gives you death, then He will gather you together for the Day of Judgment about which there is no doubt. (45:26)
Then on the Day of Judgment will you be resurrected. (23:16)
From the above verses, a singular unequivocal image manifests itself: death is the opposite of life; the dead, devoid of perception, cannot speak, nor can they hear. They have no understanding of what is happening around them since they are in the depths of darkness. Only with the resurrection on the Day of Judgment will they be returned to consciousness and life to receive their recompense.
This view of the Qur'an then is not unlike the predominant conception of death in some of the earlier books of the Tanakh, as is shown from:
The dead in Sheol are remembered no more, they are cut off from God's hand. (Ps. 88:5)
They lie in dark places, in the deep, their thoughts perish. The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence. The grave cannot praise Thee, death cannot celebrate Thee, they that go down into the pit, cannot hope for thy truth. (Isa. 38:18)
As far as the punishment to come, the Qur'an is also quite specific that any postmortem chastisement will only occur after resurrection and reckoning. This is evidenced by the following verses:
And let me not be in disgrace on the day when they will be resurrected, the day when neither wealth nor progeny will prevail, but only the person who has come to Allah with a sound heart. To the righteous the Gardens will be brought, and to the evildoers, the fire will be made to appear. (26:87-91)
When the sun is folded up, and the stars fall, and the mountains vanish… when the scrolls are laid open, when the world on high is unveiled, when the blazing fire is kindled to its fullest, and when the garden is brought near, then each soul shall know what it has brought forward. (81:1-14)
The dead then have no awareness whatsoever, nor is any questioning directed towards them while they are in the graves, for everything is in abeyance until the final collective resurrection when dreadful cosmological imbalances will occur, and judgment and sentencing will take effect. Martyrs, however, enjoy a special status with their Lord, and because of their consciousness – albeit on a different dimension – are not regarded as dead. This is clearly shown from the following verses:
Do not say of those who are slain in the path of Allah that they are dead; nay, they are alive but you cannot perceive this. (2:154)
Think not of those who are slain in the path of Allah as dead; Nay, they live finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord. (3:169)
Two verses of the Qur'an describe the state of the persons at death, when the angels take the lives of the righteous and the evildoers. Of the former, the Qur'an describes the situation as one of tranquility, wherein the dying persons are told: "Peace be on you! Enter the garden because of the good that you did in the world"(16:32). Since the emphasis throughout the Qur'an is that the entry to Paradise does not occur until after the resurrection, the meaning of verse 16:32 is simply to express that the believer greets death, or is greeted by the angels in a manner truly indicative of the Lord's pleasure, and that the experience of death is not a fearful one.
For the rejecters of faith, however, the situation is quite the opposite:
If Thou couldst see when the angels take the souls of the unbelievers; they smite their faces and their backs saying: Taste the penalty of the blazing fire. (Q8:50)
Since the casting into the fire will not occur until after the final judgment, the meaning of the verse is to indicate that the unbeliever dies in a state of terror, knowing that s/he did not do good deeds to warrant entry into Heaven, and that now there is no opportunity to return and change things. The immediate feeling is tantamount to a hellish torment, and from the verse it would appear that at the actual experience of leaving the world of the living, there is some sort of punishment inflicted – pain that can only be felt by the living, for since the dead cannot hear, speak, or otherwise perceive, there would be no point in the angels administering any immediate postmortem castigation.
Several of the traditionalists, in an effort to find scriptural vouchsafement for their narrations, cited Qur'anic verses that apparently contradict what we have just proven. Smith and Haddad identify these verses as: 6:93, 71:25, 40:46, 8:52, 9:102, 14:32, 25:21, 32:21, 40:11, 47:29, and 52:47 (1981: 32, 208). We shall limit our examination to the first three, since only by the most forced and transparent eisegesis can the others be construed as substantiating the traditionalist argument.
Verse 6:93:
Who is more wicked that the one who invents a lie against Allah, or says that "I have received inspiration" when he has received none, or one who says: "I can reveal the like of what Allah has revealed." If you could see how the wicked do fare at the flood of confusion at death! The angels stretch forth their hands saying: "Get yourselves out of this (predicament). This day you shall receive your reward – a penalty of shame, for you used to tell lies against Allah, and scornfully to reject His signs."
In translating the above verse, Yusuf Ali (YA:319f.), basing his translation on the dogmatic refraction of the traditional exegeses, has opted for the translation of "Akhriju anfusakum" as "Yield up your souls" instead of my rendering of "Get yourselves out of this (predicament)." The angels, however, take the souls of the humans (Q8:50); the latter have no choice in the matter. Ordering the humans to give up their souls therefore, is meaningless if taken in concord with the theme and language of the Qur'an.
The penalty of shame indicated in the verse is quite different to the punishment of the fire they are supposed to undergo in Hell. The earlier part of the verse tells us that these people claimed divine properties by stating that they could produce the like of what Allah has revealed. For such people, the Qur'an clearly states that their punishment will be on a particular day:
And if you are in doubt about that which we have revealed to our servant, then produce a sura like it… And if you cannot do it, and ye surely cannot, then fear the Fire whose fuel is humans and stones, which is prepared for those who reject faith. (Q2:23-24)
Verse 6:93 then is not an indication of any form of punishment in the grave, but rather warns of a pain that is inflicted in the last stages of life immediately prior to the taking of the soul, i.e., in the state of dying. The malefactors claimed to be divine; now they have to die like all other mortals, and then be forgotten, suffering the ignominy of being relegated to becoming bones and dust. From their positions of pride and false claims, they now face the harsh reality so succinctly versified by 'Adi b. Hatim:
After all their prosperity, their royal estate and their dominion, they vanished into graves yonder: Then they became like dry leaves, which are swept away by the east wind and by the west. (Bevan, 1904:21)
Verse 71:25:
Because of their sins, they were drowned, and were made to enter the fire. And they found none to help them in place of Allah.
If the above verse is treated atomistically, it could give the impression that the entry into the fire was immediate upon their drowning. The Qur'an, however, states on several occasions that the consignment to the fire will only be after sentencing on the Day of Judgment – as in 52:13, 29:25 and 26:87-91. The most explicit reference is probably 26:87-91, which read thus:
And let me not be in disgrace on the Day when they will be resurrected –
The Day wherein neither wealth nor progeny will prevail
But only the one who comes to Allah with a sound heart
To the righteous the garden will be brought
And to those of evil, the fire will appear.
Understood in light of the foregoing then, verse 71:25 therefore indicates that since at the time of their death, the people of Noah were still rejecting God, they died as those who on the Day of Judgment would have to enter the fire.
Verse 40:46:
They will be exposed to the Fire morning and evening,
And on the day of the Hour, (it will be said): "Cast the people of Pharoah into the severe penalty."
This is perhaps the strongest argument for the proponents of Qur'anic sanction for punishment in the grave (Shawkani, 1993: 4:702). The verse gives the impression that there is a chronological order of events and that before the Day of Judgment, the people of Pharoah will be exposed to torment in the morning and evening. The exegetes, however, explained the verse in several ways, but in following the traditional method, did not employ a fully thematic approach to understanding the verse. Some ventured the explanation that, as is quite frequent in Arabic literature, the sequence of the actions of exposure and casting does not require the order implied in the literal reading of the verses. The meaning, if taken vis a vis other verses, would be:
And on the Day of the Hour, (it will be said): "Cast the people of Pharoah into the severe penalty; they will be exposed to the Fire morning and evening (ibid.)
That this position is correct is evident if we consider the subsequent verses, which read:
Behold, they will dispute with each other in the Fire. The weak ones (who followed) will say to those who had been arrogant: "We but followed you: Can you then take (on yourselves) from us some share of the fire?" Those who had been arrogant will say: "We are all in this (Fire)! Truly Allah has judged between his servants!" (Q40:47-47; Trans. YA)
The last sentence indicates that the Fire to which they are exposed is one that has come about after Allah's judgment – which as the Qur'an never fails to remind us, is after the Final Hour, the Day of Reckoning. To further underline the matter, the Qur'an states:
He will go before his people on the Day of Judgment and lead them into the fire. And base indeed is the place to which they are led! (11:98)
We find, therefore, that from a thematic approach, the Qur'an is insistent that the punishment and placement in the fire will occur only after the Judgment. It is impossible then, for Pharoahand his people to be exposed to it before the final resurrection and reckoning. It is quite significant that in the section on Qur'anic exegesis, Sahih Muslim does not contain any hadithto explain the verses which the traditionalists use to bolster their position. This seems to be telling evidence that the use of Qur'anic verses to support the theory was developed over a period of time, and that Imam Muslim either did not accrue any weight to the claims of proof from the Qur'an, or that contemporaneous traditions did not meet his criteria of acceptability.
The Judeo-Christian Views on Life in the Intermediate State
If some verses from the Bible point to death being a state of oblivion, as do Ps. 6:5, 88:5, 115:17, Isa. 38:18, Eccl. 9:5, others indicate a different vision. The dead were buried with their kin as is evident from several different instances, such as Genesis 25:8, 1 Kings 2:10, 2 Kings 11:43 etc. The normative practice was to inter the dead in the family tomb, and only Rachel (Genesis 35:19-20) was not buried in this manner. The family tomb, as Simcha Raphael notes, is the central symbol for understanding the early Biblical understanding of the hereafter (1994:45). The motivation of this emphasis on burial with the family members is not solely out of sentimental respect for the physical remains, but rather "an assumed connection between proper sepulture and the condition of happiness of the deceased in the afterlife" (Brichto, 1994:26). The works of Enoch 1(22:9), 4 Ezra (7:75), and Psalms (44:14,15) are concerned in part with souls which are in some form of purification for their way to heavenly Jerusalem.
Simcha Raphael's "Jewish Views of the Afterlife" (1994) is a thorough dealing with Jewish lore on the Hibbut ha-Kever, and he proves that it was a well-developed area dating back to the days of the redaction of the Talmud. Even though some of the Midrashic material may come from sources that post-date the founding of Islam, they are based on earlier reports supposedly coming from the pre-Islamic rabbis as outlined in Chapter 1.
Since the early Christian ideas have their foundation in Jewish antecedents, the idea of a conscious intermediate state appears quite early in the Patristic writings. Evidence has been cited from various texts, among them 2 Macc. 12:39-45, Matt. 12:31, 1 Cor. 3:11-15, Isa. 66:15-16, Mal. 3:2-3 etc. Tertullian (c. 200 C.E.), Lactantius (c. 306 C.E.), and Augustine (c. 398 C.E.) all spoke about the matter (Chambers, 1902:27ff), showing that the good are in a place of rest, whereas the evil are in a place of torment, all awaiting a final judgment.
The Hades of the Gospels corresponds exactly to the Barzakh of the Hadith, for as Chambers points out, the translation of Hades into Hell is a mistake (1902, 44). From Luke 16:19-27, we can see that Hades is divided into two parts: Abraham's Bosom for the righteous (Luke 16:22) and another part for the damned, such as the rich man who was there in anguish. Lazarus and the rich man were then to be seen as not in the ultimate Heaven or Hell, but in the after-death state prior to the final judgment.
The Hadith
The 33 narrations that we have selected for investigation are as follows: SM584, 590, 903, 904, 905, 920, 927, 928, 929, 931, 932, 933, 956, 963, 1887, 1913, 2372, 2663, 2723, 2866, 2867, 2868, 2869, 2870, 2871, 2872, 2873, 2874. The main points that can be extrapolated are:
-Moses fought with the angel of death.
-There is a postmortem life review and questioning in the grave.
-The dead are punished in their graves.
-The martyrs live in heaven in the bodies of green birds.
These points will be discussed as subheadings wherein the possible sources will be explored.
Moses Fights with the Angel of Death
As Schwarzbaum observed, this legend has been extremely problematic for the Muslim theologians and traditionalists over the centuries – because it diametrically opposes the very essence of obedience and submission to Allah's will, which is best exemplified by the Prophets (1982:32). The angels we have shown earlier (summa 13; Q16:32) greet the believers making the death experience one of tranquility. The antecedents of the story then could not have come from the Qur'an. Legends of Moses defying the angel of death are detailed only in Jewish folklore, as reported by Ginzberg (1938: 3:471), Rappoport (1966: 354ff.) and Bialik (1992:101-104). The gist of the story is that Samael, the angel of death, was ordered to take the soul of Moses who apparently did not as yet want to meet his Creator. When the horrible looking angel appeared before him then, he became very angry and struck him with his staff, blinding him. Subsequently, God Himself promised to take Moses' soul, and the latter then committed himself to this unique honor.
There is a functional consensus of opinion among the scholars that the Muslim version is an adaptation of the Jewish antecedents. Bialik and Ginzberg have identified the sources as being, among others, early Petirat Moshe, Deuteronomy Rabbah 7:10, 11:5, 10, TanhumaVa'et hannan 6, and Yalkut, Va'et hannan 821. Of these, Petirat Moshe and Deuteronomy Rabbah antedate the Islamic tradition literature, while the others, although later, are based on older sources that precede Islam.
The Postmortem Life Review and the Questioning in the Grave
Hadith SM2866 notes that when someone dies, the angels give that person a review of her/his life and the recompense s/he has merited. Muslim also reports that two angels perform this task. This idea of questioning developed in stages, as shown by John MacDonald (1965:27). Initially there was one angel, then this angel was identified as Ruman, then there were two angels who were unnamed, but by the time of Tirmidhi, they were given the names of Munkarand Nakir (ibid.). If according to the Qur'an, however, the dead cannot hear or speak, and are totally without consciousness, then any concept of their interrogation must come from sources other than that Book. In Taanit 11a, we find that "When a man departs to his eternal home, all his deeds are shown before him and he is told: Such and such a thing you have done, in such and such a place on that day." Macdonald also traces the idea to the 4th Century Apocalypse of Paul which states: "I looked and saw a man about to die, and before he departed the world, there stood by him holy angels and evil ones."
Hadith SM2870 and 2872 put the number of the questioning angels at two: these angels are identified in Jewish tradition as the angel of death and Dumah (Shabbat 152b, Hagigah 5a and Berakhot 18b). Muslim does not identify them, and since the idea of disguised or unidentified angels visiting the tomb is to be found in Pesikta Rabbati 2:3 (dated at 6th/7th century: EJ: 13:335) and Ketubbot 104a, John Macdonald suggests that the later names of Munkar and Nakir given to them in tradition may be taken to mean "unknown or disguised." (1965:8). Whatever Arabic appellations and finishing touches may have been given to the angels to totally Islamize the legend, it seems evident that the sources are from the Apocalyptic, Talmudic, and Midrashic imagery.
The Dead are Punished in Their Graves
In most of the hadith on the subject, the questions and/or information are put in the mouth of a Jewish person. We see therefore that 'A'isha supposedly claims that a Jewish woman alleges that the dead are punished in the graves. Muhammad denies it (in some traditions), while in others he says that only the Jews will be punished. That Muhammad could deny that there is punishment in the grave in one hadith, while in another claim that he could hear the dead being punished, clearly points to the development of a concept which initially did not find acceptance among those who are more attentive to the Qur'anic view.
In Berakoth 62a, it states that "just as the dead are punished, so too the funeral orators are punished and those who answer after them." The hadith took this tradition and made it seem that because of the weeping of the mourners, the dead are punished. Such a position, however, was clearly at odds with the Qur'anic statement that none shall bear the punishment of another, and so we see 'A'isha being made to explain the hadith in several different narrations, some concordant with Berakoth 62a (cf. SM931), and others with the obviously polemic stance that this ruling only applies to the Jews (SM933, 927). Yet although only the Jews are supposed to be punished, we find Muhammad supposedly praying and exhorting his followers to pray to God to protect them (the Muslims) against the torment of the grave.
The Martyrs Live in Heaven in the Bodies of Green Birds
As we explained earlier, the Qur'an does not regard the martyrs as dead, and states that they are with their Lord in a state that the living cannot perceive (summa, p.12). The Qur'anic view of those who are killed in the path of the Lord is remarkably similar to that of Revelation 6:9, 10:
And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice saying: How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
If the Qur'an agrees, however, with the view of the Book of Revelations that the martyrs are with their Lord, it leaves the matter there. The hadith (SM1887), however, claims that the souls of the martyrs are in the bodies of green birds in Paradise. This narration is remarkably similar to Greek Apocalyptic Baruch, which states:
And I saw a mountainous pillar, and in the middle of it a pool of water. And there were in it multitudes of birds of all birds, but not like those here on earth. But I saw a crane as great as great oxen; all the birds were great beyond those in the world. And I asked the angel: "What is the plain, and what the pool, and what the multitudes of birds around it?" And the angel said: "Listen Baruch! The plain which contains in it the pool and other wonders is the place where the souls of the righteous come when they hold converse, being together in choirs." (3 Baruch 10, [APOT)
The hadith makes some changes in the scenario, coloring the birds green and putting chandeliers and trees instead of a plain as in Baruch. This, however, can be seen as the inevitable metamorphosis that is deliberately made to occur in adaptation to obscure the actual origin of the story.
Conclusion
As we have shown, the finer details of resurrection would have been something new to many of the early Muslims. The concept of some sort of temporary existence after death seems to have, however, been present among some of them (Guillaume 1986:9; Henninger, 1981:10). Such people, in encountering the Jewish and Christian material, would have found a fertile ground for maintaining their pre-Islamic belief. These ahadith indicate that the Arabs were well aware of the Rabbinic notion that punishment in Gehenna was only for a limited period of time (Shabbat 33b), and this is also noted by the Qur'an in 2:80. Adapting the antecedent traditions, therefore, served a two-fold purpose: they provided details to fill the Qur'anic lacunae, and they also furnished material for polemic against the People of the Book.
Mayat and Death
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mahebubchatur
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Namaaz e Mayat and meaning
NAMAAZ E MAYAT
NIYYAT: Namaaz mee guzarum bar mayyete
Hazar (Hazera)
Wajeb qurbatin illallh
ALLAHO AKBER
I declare my intention to offer congregational prayer upon the body of the deceased to reach the presence of Allah
Allah is Great
Ash-hado unla illaha illallaho
I declare there is no deity but Allah
wa ash hado unna Muhammedanr-Rassoolallah salallaho alehi wa Aalehi ALLAHO AKBER
I declare that Muhammed is His (final) Messenger, Let us all declare that Allah is Great
Allahumma sale ala Muhammadin wa Aale Muhammed
(recite three times)
ALLAHO AKBER
O Allah shower Your Blessings on (through)Mohammad and his progeny
* (ala can also mean ‘on’ or ‘through’)
Allah is Great
Allahummaghfirlil momineen wal mominaate,
I ask for forgiveness for all the Momins and around the world,
Wal, Muslimeen wal muslimaate
(I ask for forgiveness) for all believers here and around the world
ALLAHO AKBER
Allah is Great
Allahummaghfir-li haza (hazil) mayett
I ask for forgiveness of behalf of the deceased
ALLAHO AKBER
Allah is Great
ALLAHO AKBER, ALLAHO AKBER
Allah is Great, Allah is Great
LA ILLAHA ILLALLAHO
There is no deity except Allah
WALLAHO AKBER,
Allah is Great
WALILLA-HIL HAMD
For Him is all Praise
Significance of raising our hands and touching the ears with the thumb and reciting Allaho Akbar in unison
NIYYAT: Namaaz mee guzarum bar mayyete
Hazar (Hazera)
Wajeb qurbatin illallh
ALLAHO AKBER
I declare my intention to offer congregational prayer upon the body of the deceased to reach the presence of Allah
Allah is Great
Ash-hado unla illaha illallaho
I declare there is no deity but Allah
wa ash hado unna Muhammedanr-Rassoolallah salallaho alehi wa Aalehi ALLAHO AKBER
I declare that Muhammed is His (final) Messenger, Let us all declare that Allah is Great
Allahumma sale ala Muhammadin wa Aale Muhammed
(recite three times)
ALLAHO AKBER
O Allah shower Your Blessings on (through)Mohammad and his progeny
* (ala can also mean ‘on’ or ‘through’)
Allah is Great
Allahummaghfirlil momineen wal mominaate,
I ask for forgiveness for all the Momins and around the world,
Wal, Muslimeen wal muslimaate
(I ask for forgiveness) for all believers here and around the world
ALLAHO AKBER
Allah is Great
Allahummaghfir-li haza (hazil) mayett
I ask for forgiveness of behalf of the deceased
ALLAHO AKBER
Allah is Great
ALLAHO AKBER, ALLAHO AKBER
Allah is Great, Allah is Great
LA ILLAHA ILLALLAHO
There is no deity except Allah
WALLAHO AKBER,
Allah is Great
WALILLA-HIL HAMD
For Him is all Praise
Significance of raising our hands and touching the ears with the thumb and reciting Allaho Akbar in unison
MSMS mentioned in his Farman that when Mansur al-Hallaj was executed , even his blood pronounced "Anna al Haqq" ( I am the truth). They had to subsequently burn his body.
Below is the descrption of the passing away of the great saint Kabir:
The final act of Kabir’s life exemplifies beautifully his non-sectarian teachings: At his death the disciples were fighting if his body should be buried in Muslim fashion, or burned in Hindu fashion. Kabir rose from death, telling them: “Half of my remains shall be buried by the Moslem rites, and let the other half be cremated with a Hindu sacrament.” He then vanished. When the disciples opened the coffin which had contained his body, nothing was found but a dazzling array of gold-colored champak flowers. Half of these were obediently buried by the Moslems, who revere his shrine to this day. The other half was used for Hindu rites.
http://yoganandaharmony.com/yogananda-history-chapter-4
The following is the description of the death of shahids (martyrs) who died in Jerruk.
"The incident of Jerruk took a heavy toll of lives and materials of the Ismailis. The dead bodies were buried in a mass-grave in the heart of Jerruk, known as Ganji Shahidan, near the residence of the Imam. The Imam offered Fatiha and paid a glowing and well-deserved tributes to the martyrs and said, "These heroes are like the martyrs of Karbala and their memory shall ever remain green, even their flesh shall never decay."
According to "Athar-i Muhammadi" (p. 136), the Imam also recited the following touching couplets in Persian on that occasion:-
Gardad chu kharab tan chigam jan bashad,
Viran chi shaud hubab aman bashad.
"No affliction should prevail when a body perished, because the soul exists (as if) the bubbles are smashed, but the ocean exists."
Darushud ishq zianish sud ast,
Gar jan biruvad che baak janan bashad.
"Love became a medicine, whose deficit is a profit for me. Doesn't matter if a body is perished, but one who gives life is in existence."
According to the report of "Sind Observer" (Karachi, April 3, 1949), "Seventy dead bodies of Khojas buried 107 years ago at Imam Bara in Jherruck town, 94 miles by road north-east of Karachi, were found to be fresh on being exhumed recently in the course of digging the foundation for a new mosque for the locality, a Sind government official disclosed on Saturday. The bodies which lay in a common grave was again interred another site selected for the mosque. The Khojas were believed to have been murdered in a local feud 107 years ago according to local tradition in Jherruck."
Source: "Jerruk and the Ismailis during the British rule in India" by Mumtaz Tajdin
http://www.ismaili.net/inbyauth.html
There is a related thread on funeral traditions at;
http://www.ismaili.net/html/modules.php ... 41&start=0
Below is the descrption of the passing away of the great saint Kabir:
The final act of Kabir’s life exemplifies beautifully his non-sectarian teachings: At his death the disciples were fighting if his body should be buried in Muslim fashion, or burned in Hindu fashion. Kabir rose from death, telling them: “Half of my remains shall be buried by the Moslem rites, and let the other half be cremated with a Hindu sacrament.” He then vanished. When the disciples opened the coffin which had contained his body, nothing was found but a dazzling array of gold-colored champak flowers. Half of these were obediently buried by the Moslems, who revere his shrine to this day. The other half was used for Hindu rites.
http://yoganandaharmony.com/yogananda-history-chapter-4
The following is the description of the death of shahids (martyrs) who died in Jerruk.
"The incident of Jerruk took a heavy toll of lives and materials of the Ismailis. The dead bodies were buried in a mass-grave in the heart of Jerruk, known as Ganji Shahidan, near the residence of the Imam. The Imam offered Fatiha and paid a glowing and well-deserved tributes to the martyrs and said, "These heroes are like the martyrs of Karbala and their memory shall ever remain green, even their flesh shall never decay."
According to "Athar-i Muhammadi" (p. 136), the Imam also recited the following touching couplets in Persian on that occasion:-
Gardad chu kharab tan chigam jan bashad,
Viran chi shaud hubab aman bashad.
"No affliction should prevail when a body perished, because the soul exists (as if) the bubbles are smashed, but the ocean exists."
Darushud ishq zianish sud ast,
Gar jan biruvad che baak janan bashad.
"Love became a medicine, whose deficit is a profit for me. Doesn't matter if a body is perished, but one who gives life is in existence."
According to the report of "Sind Observer" (Karachi, April 3, 1949), "Seventy dead bodies of Khojas buried 107 years ago at Imam Bara in Jherruck town, 94 miles by road north-east of Karachi, were found to be fresh on being exhumed recently in the course of digging the foundation for a new mosque for the locality, a Sind government official disclosed on Saturday. The bodies which lay in a common grave was again interred another site selected for the mosque. The Khojas were believed to have been murdered in a local feud 107 years ago according to local tradition in Jherruck."
Source: "Jerruk and the Ismailis during the British rule in India" by Mumtaz Tajdin
http://www.ismaili.net/inbyauth.html
There is a related thread on funeral traditions at;
http://www.ismaili.net/html/modules.php ... 41&start=0
Ya Ali Madad:
eXCELLENT POSTING by Kmaherali
Only God can order that body should not decay.
Did Imam on Jerruck incident prayed to somebody for this.
NO NO NO.
HE ordered the angels n nature for the same.
only shallow believers consider him as plain vanilla Imam n not beyond
and stuck at Tariqati level.
This simple act/order that certifies who acknowledge this event that
Imam/ALI is none other than Allah/God.
eXCELLENT POSTING by Kmaherali
Only God can order that body should not decay.
Did Imam on Jerruck incident prayed to somebody for this.
NO NO NO.
HE ordered the angels n nature for the same.
only shallow believers consider him as plain vanilla Imam n not beyond
and stuck at Tariqati level.
This simple act/order that certifies who acknowledge this event that
Imam/ALI is none other than Allah/God.
Karim,According to the report of "Sind Observer" (Karachi, April 3, 1949), "Seventy dead bodies of Khojas buried 107 years ago at Imam Bara in Jherruck town, 94 miles by road north-east of Karachi, were found to be fresh on being exhumed recently in the course of digging the foundation for a new mosque for the locality, a Sind government official disclosed on Saturday.
Thanks for posing the news paper article which I wanted for a long time, however I heard and read the above events many times before but I didn't know the name of that news paper.
That is true that the bodies of Imams, pirs and those peoples who died in fighting for Haqq ( like Kabala, Jerak ) are not decays or putrefys!!
Not long ago the body of Imam Hasan Ali Shah was also used to shown to interested jamati members who wants to see his face in Hasanabad! and many older jamati members still telling that his face was not decayed at all
I heard it in Abu Ali waez and also heard from some older Jamati members who used to live in Hasanabad, Mumbai they showed Imam face by their own eyes.
There is a tunnel ( underground way ) to reach to the tomb, now a days it is closed but it was open more than 50-60 years ago and peoples were using that tunnel to see the face of Imam.
You may ask this any older Jamati members from Mumbai, I think you are originalyl from Mumbai.
There is a tunnel ( underground way ) to reach to the tomb, now a days it is closed but it was open more than 50-60 years ago and peoples were using that tunnel to see the face of Imam.
You may ask this any older Jamati members from Mumbai, I think you are originalyl from Mumbai.
Even if that was true, I wonder which kind of spiritual satisfaction a murid would obtain, by seeing the physical face of an Imam?kmaherali wrote:Abhaiagakhani wrote:Not long ago the body of Imam Hasan Ali Shah was also used to shown to interested jamati members who wants to see his face in Hasanabad! and many older jamati members still telling that his face was not decayed at all [/b]
Interesting. So the body has not been buried yet?
It’s Been 140 Years Since This Catholic Nun Died, But Her Body Is Said To Be Mysteriously Unchanged
The year is 1909, and it’s been 30 years since the death of Bernadette Soubirous – a simple but pious girl from a small town in France. Doctors are preparing to perform the first exhumation of her body. And in normal circumstances, the medics might expect to find some degree of natural decomposition. But Bernadette was no ordinary person.
Photo slide show at:
https://scribol.com/anthropology-and-hi ... gjrtkytggy
The year is 1909, and it’s been 30 years since the death of Bernadette Soubirous – a simple but pious girl from a small town in France. Doctors are preparing to perform the first exhumation of her body. And in normal circumstances, the medics might expect to find some degree of natural decomposition. But Bernadette was no ordinary person.
Photo slide show at:
https://scribol.com/anthropology-and-hi ... gjrtkytggy
Facing the Fact of My Death
As a child, confronting my mortality was terrifying. Now it is an opportunity.
Excerpt:
So, sooner or later I will die. I’m assured that it will happen. I know that if you are reading this article 100 years from now, I will no longer exist. I will have paid the debt for the gift of being. Death is our collective fate. Yet so many of us fear to talk about it, fear to face it, terrified by the idea of nonbeing. But we must face our destiny, our rendezvous with death. Indeed, the concept of death is a deep and perennial theme in philosophical and theological-religious thought; it is one of the Big Questions. As the philosopher Todd May writes, “Of course, most religions don’t claim that we don’t die. But there is, for many religions, a particular sense in which we don’t really die.”
It is in this spirit of exploration that I will interview 12 deeply knowledgeable scholars, philosophers and teachers, one each month, about the meaning of death in their respective traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Jainism and others. I will be asking questions like: What is death? Why do we fear death? Is death final? Do we have immortal souls? What role does death play in how we ought to live our lives?
The objective is not to find definitive answers to these eternal questions, but to engage, as my students and I try to do in our classes, in a lively discussion about a fact that most of us would rather avoid, and move ourselves a little closer to the truth.
Next: An interview with the Tibetan Buddhist Dadul Namgyal.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/opin ... 0920200203
As a child, confronting my mortality was terrifying. Now it is an opportunity.
Excerpt:
So, sooner or later I will die. I’m assured that it will happen. I know that if you are reading this article 100 years from now, I will no longer exist. I will have paid the debt for the gift of being. Death is our collective fate. Yet so many of us fear to talk about it, fear to face it, terrified by the idea of nonbeing. But we must face our destiny, our rendezvous with death. Indeed, the concept of death is a deep and perennial theme in philosophical and theological-religious thought; it is one of the Big Questions. As the philosopher Todd May writes, “Of course, most religions don’t claim that we don’t die. But there is, for many religions, a particular sense in which we don’t really die.”
It is in this spirit of exploration that I will interview 12 deeply knowledgeable scholars, philosophers and teachers, one each month, about the meaning of death in their respective traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Jainism and others. I will be asking questions like: What is death? Why do we fear death? Is death final? Do we have immortal souls? What role does death play in how we ought to live our lives?
The objective is not to find definitive answers to these eternal questions, but to engage, as my students and I try to do in our classes, in a lively discussion about a fact that most of us would rather avoid, and move ourselves a little closer to the truth.
Next: An interview with the Tibetan Buddhist Dadul Namgyal.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/opin ... 0920200203
Don’t fear the reaper, or the dying
It occurred to me, as I sat holding my mother’s thin hand in the intensive care unit, that none of her stories had been about dying. My mother was celebrated in our family for her stories, many of which sprang from her years as a nurse in a large Catholic hospital. The things she’d seen! The objects lodged where no objects should be. Wrong limbs operated on. The hospital priest much loved by student nurses because he was handsome and could say mass in 10 minutes.
Her patients loved her because she had an unending supply of goodwill, which hid her own sorrows. The stories she brought home from the hospital were hilarious and vivid and grotesque, but they always ended on a high note. The lady and her monkey left the emergency room in harmony. The baby survived.
Dying was one thing she didn’t talk about: Not her own death, and not the ones she’d witnessed. Except once, when she’d told me about a dying patient whose face became suffused with radiance at the very end. When my mother was dying, I kept waiting for that moment, but it never came. She laboured for breath and pulled at her oxygen mask so that she could whisper to me that she was afraid. I know you are, I said.
But there was so much else that was radiant. She trusted me with her fear; it was a gift. The nurses who moved her fragile body with such tenderness, they were a gift. The cleaners who mopped her floor quietly and smiled at her. The junior doctor who took us into a room and shut the door so that we could cry in private when all the options had run out. These days we argue about medically assisted dying, but what can’t be known, until you’re actually there, is how much life there is in death. As the palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke writes in her book Dear Life, “All that is good in human nature – courage, compassion, our capacity to love – is here in its most distilled form.”
And humour, too, if like my family you bend toward the macabre. Christie Blatchford, the great journalist who died this week, was planning to write something funny about the end point; I wish she had, because black comedy is everywhere. Pneumonia had almost robbed my mother of her voice, so the hospital gave us a sheet printed with helpful pictures a patient could point at. There were squares indicating food and TV and even a grinning face that said “happy,” which I don’t think got used very much. “Music” sat right above “let me go.” What if you were asking for a song and your finger slipped?
We wrote the alphabet on a sheet of paper and my mother picked out letters. “She’s not really spelling out ‘wine,’ is she?” my sister asked. But she was, so we smuggled wine in a little plastic bottle that looked like a specimen jar – Mildred, who accidentally once brought home tonsils in just such a jar, would have appreciated it – and dipped in a sponge to swab her mouth with pinot grigio. I made my siblings promise to do the same for me when my time came.
What can we promise each other, at the end? That we’ll be there, through all the boring, painful, transcendent moments. You’ll fall asleep in uncomfortable chairs and drink terrible cafeteria coffee so that if your person wakes up suddenly, panicked and confused, you will be there to take their hand and remind them that they’re loved. You’ll play Luciano Pavarotti through your crappy phone and it will sound good enough. You’ll remember the times you travelled and argued and danced, and laugh about dropping the turkey when it came out of the oven. You’ll apologize for all the times you didn’t call. One of you will talk and one of you will listen, because hearing is said to be the last thing to go.
I understand why people don’t like hospitals, won’t visit hospices, worry about what to say to the dying. We push death to the margins of life so we don’t have to think about it knocking at our own window. The crazy thing is that, if you’re lucky enough to end up at home or in a facility that treats patients humanely, being with the dying actually reminds you of what you love about life. Time folds in on itself, leaving space to think deeply. You become grateful for lungs that still work, and the frozen moon when you leave the hospital in the middle of the night. You remember how much you actually enjoy your family, as they show up with snacks and socks and random useless things, and talk and laugh and reminisce so loudly that a nurse comes and says “shhh” and ostentatiously shuts the door.
Everybody knows what an honour it is to be present at a birth, but what a privilege it is as well to be there at the end, to ease someone’s passing. Of course it’s also terrible, the stabbing beginning of grief, but that pain can be offset with the knowledge that a valuable service has been performed. A service we’ll all need, one day.
We watched our mother’s failing body that had brought four humans into the world, had nursed countless others, had told thousands of stories, had worn red lipstick, had wrung all the juice out of life. We told her we loved her. And then we let her go.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion ... VgMaFxFnIY
It occurred to me, as I sat holding my mother’s thin hand in the intensive care unit, that none of her stories had been about dying. My mother was celebrated in our family for her stories, many of which sprang from her years as a nurse in a large Catholic hospital. The things she’d seen! The objects lodged where no objects should be. Wrong limbs operated on. The hospital priest much loved by student nurses because he was handsome and could say mass in 10 minutes.
Her patients loved her because she had an unending supply of goodwill, which hid her own sorrows. The stories she brought home from the hospital were hilarious and vivid and grotesque, but they always ended on a high note. The lady and her monkey left the emergency room in harmony. The baby survived.
Dying was one thing she didn’t talk about: Not her own death, and not the ones she’d witnessed. Except once, when she’d told me about a dying patient whose face became suffused with radiance at the very end. When my mother was dying, I kept waiting for that moment, but it never came. She laboured for breath and pulled at her oxygen mask so that she could whisper to me that she was afraid. I know you are, I said.
But there was so much else that was radiant. She trusted me with her fear; it was a gift. The nurses who moved her fragile body with such tenderness, they were a gift. The cleaners who mopped her floor quietly and smiled at her. The junior doctor who took us into a room and shut the door so that we could cry in private when all the options had run out. These days we argue about medically assisted dying, but what can’t be known, until you’re actually there, is how much life there is in death. As the palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke writes in her book Dear Life, “All that is good in human nature – courage, compassion, our capacity to love – is here in its most distilled form.”
And humour, too, if like my family you bend toward the macabre. Christie Blatchford, the great journalist who died this week, was planning to write something funny about the end point; I wish she had, because black comedy is everywhere. Pneumonia had almost robbed my mother of her voice, so the hospital gave us a sheet printed with helpful pictures a patient could point at. There were squares indicating food and TV and even a grinning face that said “happy,” which I don’t think got used very much. “Music” sat right above “let me go.” What if you were asking for a song and your finger slipped?
We wrote the alphabet on a sheet of paper and my mother picked out letters. “She’s not really spelling out ‘wine,’ is she?” my sister asked. But she was, so we smuggled wine in a little plastic bottle that looked like a specimen jar – Mildred, who accidentally once brought home tonsils in just such a jar, would have appreciated it – and dipped in a sponge to swab her mouth with pinot grigio. I made my siblings promise to do the same for me when my time came.
What can we promise each other, at the end? That we’ll be there, through all the boring, painful, transcendent moments. You’ll fall asleep in uncomfortable chairs and drink terrible cafeteria coffee so that if your person wakes up suddenly, panicked and confused, you will be there to take their hand and remind them that they’re loved. You’ll play Luciano Pavarotti through your crappy phone and it will sound good enough. You’ll remember the times you travelled and argued and danced, and laugh about dropping the turkey when it came out of the oven. You’ll apologize for all the times you didn’t call. One of you will talk and one of you will listen, because hearing is said to be the last thing to go.
I understand why people don’t like hospitals, won’t visit hospices, worry about what to say to the dying. We push death to the margins of life so we don’t have to think about it knocking at our own window. The crazy thing is that, if you’re lucky enough to end up at home or in a facility that treats patients humanely, being with the dying actually reminds you of what you love about life. Time folds in on itself, leaving space to think deeply. You become grateful for lungs that still work, and the frozen moon when you leave the hospital in the middle of the night. You remember how much you actually enjoy your family, as they show up with snacks and socks and random useless things, and talk and laugh and reminisce so loudly that a nurse comes and says “shhh” and ostentatiously shuts the door.
Everybody knows what an honour it is to be present at a birth, but what a privilege it is as well to be there at the end, to ease someone’s passing. Of course it’s also terrible, the stabbing beginning of grief, but that pain can be offset with the knowledge that a valuable service has been performed. A service we’ll all need, one day.
We watched our mother’s failing body that had brought four humans into the world, had nursed countless others, had told thousands of stories, had worn red lipstick, had wrung all the juice out of life. We told her we loved her. And then we let her go.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion ... VgMaFxFnIY
How Does a Buddhist Monk Face Death?
If we learn to celebrate life for its ephemeral beauty, its coming and going, we can make peace with its end.
This is the first in a series of interviews with religious scholars from several faiths — and one atheist — on the meaning of death. This month’s conversation is with Geshe Dadul Namgyal, a Tibetan Buddhist monk who began his Buddhist studies in 1977 at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala, India, and went on to earn the prestigious Geshe Lharampa degree in 1992 at Drepung Loseling Monastic University, South India. He also holds a master’s degree in English Literature from Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. He is currently with the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, Emory University. This interview was conducted by email. — George Yancy
George Yancy: I was about 20 years old when I first became intrigued by Eastern thought, especially Buddhism. It was the transformation of Siddhartha Gautama to the Buddha that fascinated me, especially the sense of calmness when faced with competing desires and fears. For so many, death is one of those fears. Can you say why, from a Buddhist perspective, we humans fear death?
Dadul Namgyal: We fear death because we love life, but a little too much, and often look at just the preferred side of it. That is, we cling to a fantasized life, seeing it with colors brighter than it has. Particularly, we insist on seeing life in its incomplete form without death, its inalienable flip side. It’s not that we think death will not come someday, but that it will not happen today, tomorrow, next month, next year, and so on. This biased, selective and incomplete image of life gradually builds in us a strong wish, hope, or even belief in a life with no death associated with it, at least in the foreseeable future. However, reality contradicts this belief. So it is natural for us, as long as we succumb to those inner fragilities, to have this fear of death, to not want to think of it or see it as something that will rip life apart.
We fear death also because we are attached to our comforts of wealth, family, friends, power, and other worldly pleasures. We see death as something that would separate us from the objects to which we cling. In addition, we fear death because of our uncertainty about what follows it. A sense of being not in control, but at the mercy of circumstance, contributes to the fear. It is important to note that fear of death is not the same as knowledge or awareness of death.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/opin ... 0920200226
If we learn to celebrate life for its ephemeral beauty, its coming and going, we can make peace with its end.
This is the first in a series of interviews with religious scholars from several faiths — and one atheist — on the meaning of death. This month’s conversation is with Geshe Dadul Namgyal, a Tibetan Buddhist monk who began his Buddhist studies in 1977 at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala, India, and went on to earn the prestigious Geshe Lharampa degree in 1992 at Drepung Loseling Monastic University, South India. He also holds a master’s degree in English Literature from Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. He is currently with the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, Emory University. This interview was conducted by email. — George Yancy
George Yancy: I was about 20 years old when I first became intrigued by Eastern thought, especially Buddhism. It was the transformation of Siddhartha Gautama to the Buddha that fascinated me, especially the sense of calmness when faced with competing desires and fears. For so many, death is one of those fears. Can you say why, from a Buddhist perspective, we humans fear death?
Dadul Namgyal: We fear death because we love life, but a little too much, and often look at just the preferred side of it. That is, we cling to a fantasized life, seeing it with colors brighter than it has. Particularly, we insist on seeing life in its incomplete form without death, its inalienable flip side. It’s not that we think death will not come someday, but that it will not happen today, tomorrow, next month, next year, and so on. This biased, selective and incomplete image of life gradually builds in us a strong wish, hope, or even belief in a life with no death associated with it, at least in the foreseeable future. However, reality contradicts this belief. So it is natural for us, as long as we succumb to those inner fragilities, to have this fear of death, to not want to think of it or see it as something that will rip life apart.
We fear death also because we are attached to our comforts of wealth, family, friends, power, and other worldly pleasures. We see death as something that would separate us from the objects to which we cling. In addition, we fear death because of our uncertainty about what follows it. A sense of being not in control, but at the mercy of circumstance, contributes to the fear. It is important to note that fear of death is not the same as knowledge or awareness of death.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/opin ... 0920200226
I’m Going to Die. I May as Well Be Cheerful About It.
While death is inevitable, our attitude about it is not.
Generally, I don’t think about death during the day. My schedule is full, and I focus on what is right before my eyes. It’s usually only when I go to funerals that I reflect upon deaths past, present and future; most of the time I think about life. Still, about once a month I wake in the night and know with absolute clarity that I will soon be gone.
I have always felt my own finitude. My father had his first stroke at 45 and died at 54. My mother died of diabetes at 74. I am 72. I would like to attend my last grandchild’s high school graduation and meet at least one great-grandchild. However, with my family history, that is unlikely. Now, with the news filled with stories of the coronavirus, I am reminded of the many random diseases that can strike suddenly and lethally.
Like almost all my peers, I want to die young as late as possible. I don’t want to live beyond my energy level. I don’t want to suffer dementia or lie helpless in a hospital. I want to die while I still believe that others love me and that I am useful.
I have done what I can to prepare for my death. I have a will, a health care proxy and medical directives. I’ve had many conversations with my family and my doctor about end-of-life decisions. My mnemonic device for all of them is, “If in doubt, snuff me out.”
While death is inevitable, our attitudes about it are not. We can be sanguine or gloomy, solicitous of others or self-absorbed. We can approach our deaths with fear and resistance or with curiosity and a sense of mission.
Facing death offers us an opportunity to work with everything we have within us and everything we know about the world. If we have been resilient most of our lives, most likely we will cope well with our own dying. It is frightening, of course, but it is our last chance to be a role model, even a hero.
I’d like to face death with the courage of my grandmother. The last time I visited her, she was recently widowed and dying from leukemia. She lay in bed in her small home in eastern Colorado. I could see she was in pain and could barely move, but when I asked about her health, she replied: “Let’s talk about you. How is college going this year?”
When I complimented her on her courage, she said simply, “I am going to be in pain and die soon no matter how I behave, so I might as well be cheerful.”
By the time we are in our 70s, we are likely to have witnessed many people dying. I’ve seen my parents and my husband’s parents die “bad deaths” with months of suffering and too much medical intervention, and I’ve witnessed peaceful deaths in rooms filled with love. Most of us boomers know how to behave at a bedside and have a sense of how we want to act when it’s our turn to be the one in bed.
We also have had decades of observing the rituals of death — hospitals and hospice, funerals, burials and the communal meals afterward. From these experiences, we have learned what we do and don’t want when it’s our turn. We may continue some of these traditions, but we will also design our own. Some of my friends with terminal illnesses have hosted goodbye parties in parks or at our local blues bar. Wakes with dancing, music and storytelling are back in style. Many of us want pine box coffins, green burials or cremations with our ashes tossed in beautiful places.
What happens after death is a popular topic among people I know. Opinions range from, “We turn into dirt,” to “I will see the face of God.” My writer friends want heaven to have a good library. One friend believes we will return to the place we were before we were born.
Jean Nordhaus wrote, “The dead are all around us / feathering the air with their wings.” A therapist who lost her young, cello-playing husband told me she feels his presence and knows they are still deeply connected in spirit. She finds that many people are afraid to die because they have no language for the numinous; however, she is certain that neither life nor relationships end with death.
I feel death may not be as big a change as we suppose. Rather, it might be like crossing a river.
I like to think that my relatives and friends will be waiting for me on the other side. I like to imagine grassy banks and flower-filled pastures shining in the sun. I like to think a lot of things, but I don’t know for sure.
I am not a particularly mystical person, but I have had mystifying experiences. When my Aunt Grace died, I drove to the Ozarks for her funeral. Her little house was surrounded by pink surprise lilies — what my cousins called “naked ladies.” The next spring, even though I had not planted them and they had never come up before, surprise lilies popped up in my garden. The year after that they popped up again but in different places. I concluded that Aunt Grace was greeting me. If I wanted to send a message after death, I would do it with flowers, too.
I love the world but I cannot stay. Death is democratic and we will all participate in its enactment. I will miss the beauty all around me. I have taken so much pleasure in the natural world, in people and books, in music and art, in cups of coffee and lolling cats. If I knew that I had a month left to live, I wouldn’t spend my time much differently than I do now.
When I was a girl in the 1950s, snow fell often in the long winters of western Nebraska. I remember one winter when, after the streets were plowed, mountains of snow 10 feet tall stood in the middle of the streets. As a young mother, my favorite days were snow days when our family could stay home and play board games. I would make soup and popcorn. I relished taking my children outside to do the things that I had done in the snow as a girl. I loved falling asleep with my family safe on a blizzardy night when the streets were impassable and a blanket of peace covered our town.
Now, snow has become a profoundly spiritual experience. When it snows, I sit by my window and watch it fall. I go deep into its purity and softness.
Snow falls inside and outside of me. It settles my brain and calms my body.
I hope death feels like watching the snow grow thicker and thicker. Doctors call dying of a morphine overdose being “snowed.” I would not mind that at all. I would like to disappear in a whiteout.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/opin ... 3053090307
While death is inevitable, our attitude about it is not.
Generally, I don’t think about death during the day. My schedule is full, and I focus on what is right before my eyes. It’s usually only when I go to funerals that I reflect upon deaths past, present and future; most of the time I think about life. Still, about once a month I wake in the night and know with absolute clarity that I will soon be gone.
I have always felt my own finitude. My father had his first stroke at 45 and died at 54. My mother died of diabetes at 74. I am 72. I would like to attend my last grandchild’s high school graduation and meet at least one great-grandchild. However, with my family history, that is unlikely. Now, with the news filled with stories of the coronavirus, I am reminded of the many random diseases that can strike suddenly and lethally.
Like almost all my peers, I want to die young as late as possible. I don’t want to live beyond my energy level. I don’t want to suffer dementia or lie helpless in a hospital. I want to die while I still believe that others love me and that I am useful.
I have done what I can to prepare for my death. I have a will, a health care proxy and medical directives. I’ve had many conversations with my family and my doctor about end-of-life decisions. My mnemonic device for all of them is, “If in doubt, snuff me out.”
While death is inevitable, our attitudes about it are not. We can be sanguine or gloomy, solicitous of others or self-absorbed. We can approach our deaths with fear and resistance or with curiosity and a sense of mission.
Facing death offers us an opportunity to work with everything we have within us and everything we know about the world. If we have been resilient most of our lives, most likely we will cope well with our own dying. It is frightening, of course, but it is our last chance to be a role model, even a hero.
I’d like to face death with the courage of my grandmother. The last time I visited her, she was recently widowed and dying from leukemia. She lay in bed in her small home in eastern Colorado. I could see she was in pain and could barely move, but when I asked about her health, she replied: “Let’s talk about you. How is college going this year?”
When I complimented her on her courage, she said simply, “I am going to be in pain and die soon no matter how I behave, so I might as well be cheerful.”
By the time we are in our 70s, we are likely to have witnessed many people dying. I’ve seen my parents and my husband’s parents die “bad deaths” with months of suffering and too much medical intervention, and I’ve witnessed peaceful deaths in rooms filled with love. Most of us boomers know how to behave at a bedside and have a sense of how we want to act when it’s our turn to be the one in bed.
We also have had decades of observing the rituals of death — hospitals and hospice, funerals, burials and the communal meals afterward. From these experiences, we have learned what we do and don’t want when it’s our turn. We may continue some of these traditions, but we will also design our own. Some of my friends with terminal illnesses have hosted goodbye parties in parks or at our local blues bar. Wakes with dancing, music and storytelling are back in style. Many of us want pine box coffins, green burials or cremations with our ashes tossed in beautiful places.
What happens after death is a popular topic among people I know. Opinions range from, “We turn into dirt,” to “I will see the face of God.” My writer friends want heaven to have a good library. One friend believes we will return to the place we were before we were born.
Jean Nordhaus wrote, “The dead are all around us / feathering the air with their wings.” A therapist who lost her young, cello-playing husband told me she feels his presence and knows they are still deeply connected in spirit. She finds that many people are afraid to die because they have no language for the numinous; however, she is certain that neither life nor relationships end with death.
I feel death may not be as big a change as we suppose. Rather, it might be like crossing a river.
I like to think that my relatives and friends will be waiting for me on the other side. I like to imagine grassy banks and flower-filled pastures shining in the sun. I like to think a lot of things, but I don’t know for sure.
I am not a particularly mystical person, but I have had mystifying experiences. When my Aunt Grace died, I drove to the Ozarks for her funeral. Her little house was surrounded by pink surprise lilies — what my cousins called “naked ladies.” The next spring, even though I had not planted them and they had never come up before, surprise lilies popped up in my garden. The year after that they popped up again but in different places. I concluded that Aunt Grace was greeting me. If I wanted to send a message after death, I would do it with flowers, too.
I love the world but I cannot stay. Death is democratic and we will all participate in its enactment. I will miss the beauty all around me. I have taken so much pleasure in the natural world, in people and books, in music and art, in cups of coffee and lolling cats. If I knew that I had a month left to live, I wouldn’t spend my time much differently than I do now.
When I was a girl in the 1950s, snow fell often in the long winters of western Nebraska. I remember one winter when, after the streets were plowed, mountains of snow 10 feet tall stood in the middle of the streets. As a young mother, my favorite days were snow days when our family could stay home and play board games. I would make soup and popcorn. I relished taking my children outside to do the things that I had done in the snow as a girl. I loved falling asleep with my family safe on a blizzardy night when the streets were impassable and a blanket of peace covered our town.
Now, snow has become a profoundly spiritual experience. When it snows, I sit by my window and watch it fall. I go deep into its purity and softness.
Snow falls inside and outside of me. It settles my brain and calms my body.
I hope death feels like watching the snow grow thicker and thicker. Doctors call dying of a morphine overdose being “snowed.” I would not mind that at all. I would like to disappear in a whiteout.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/opin ... 3053090307
What Judaism Teaches Us About the Fear of Death
A conversation with the Princeton scholar Moulie Vidas on mortality and the embrace of life in Judaism.
This is the second in a series of interviews with religious scholars from several faiths — and one atheist — on the meaning of death. The idea for this series, and the content of this interview, originated shortly before the pandemic. Yet all of it has obviously taken on a deeper and more urgent relevance in the midst of this crisis. The essential ideas being discussed here are ones that people everywhere, religious or not, are grappling with.
This month’s conversation is with Moulie Vidas, an associate professor of religion and Judaic studies at Princeton University. His books include “Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud” and a collection of essays, coedited with Catherine Chin, “Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History.” — George Yancy
George Yancy: I’m delighted to engage with some of the important beliefs within Judaism to get a deeper sense of this living and historical religious tradition. I’m aware of some of the similarities between Christianity, Islam and Judaism, but in what ways would you say Judaism differs from the other two?
Moulie Vidas: Speaking very generally, I’d say there are two characteristics that set most forms of Judaism apart from Christianity and Islam. First, whereas Christianity and Islam imagine themselves as universal religions, Judaism is usually imagined as a religion for a specific people, for Jews. This of course does not mean that Judaism does not concern itself with humanity as a whole, but the orientation is different.
Second, in comparison to Christianity and Islam, Judaism places less of a stress on belief and more on practice. To be sure, one could formulate core Jewish “doctrines” (and many thinkers have), but it is not a coincidence that the most classical Jewish literature lacks such a formulation. Most Jewish movements are concerned not with what you believe about God, but with how the tradition informs your life: how you pray and celebrate the holidays; how you conduct your family or business affairs; what you eat and so on.
Yancy: An essential part of Judaism is that Jews have a covenant with God — an agreement or commitment between God and his people. Is there anything in this covenant regarding how Jewish people ought to approach death? And does that covenant speak to the promise of an afterlife?
Vidas: The covenant as we find it in the Hebrew Bible is about life, not about death. It promises, to those who keep it, a long and prosperous life (see, for example, Deuteronomy 6:2, in which one keeps the commandments so that “your days may be long”) rather than an afterlife. In fact, the Hebrew Bible mentions neither heaven nor hell: it speaks of “she’ol,” a dark underworld to which everyone goes after death, regardless of how they acted during their lifetime. There is also only one chapter in the entire Hebrew Bible that refers explicitly to a collective resurrection of the dead in the future (Daniel 12).
In contrast with the “this world” emphasis of these biblical manifestations of the covenant, we find already the earliest rabbinical texts looking increasingly toward another world. What the rabbis meant by this usually was not the immediate afterlife following a person’s death, but rather the afterlife following resurrection of the dead at the end of times. At the same time, we see from the Second Temple period onward the development of the idea that different souls have different destinies immediately after death. The righteous are rewarded in heaven and the wicked are punished in hell. The distinctions between these two kinds of afterlife, the immediate one and the eschatological one (end-of-times version), are often unclear, and the way these elements are imagined varies greatly among different Jewish texts and authors.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/opin ... ogin-email
A conversation with the Princeton scholar Moulie Vidas on mortality and the embrace of life in Judaism.
This is the second in a series of interviews with religious scholars from several faiths — and one atheist — on the meaning of death. The idea for this series, and the content of this interview, originated shortly before the pandemic. Yet all of it has obviously taken on a deeper and more urgent relevance in the midst of this crisis. The essential ideas being discussed here are ones that people everywhere, religious or not, are grappling with.
This month’s conversation is with Moulie Vidas, an associate professor of religion and Judaic studies at Princeton University. His books include “Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud” and a collection of essays, coedited with Catherine Chin, “Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History.” — George Yancy
George Yancy: I’m delighted to engage with some of the important beliefs within Judaism to get a deeper sense of this living and historical religious tradition. I’m aware of some of the similarities between Christianity, Islam and Judaism, but in what ways would you say Judaism differs from the other two?
Moulie Vidas: Speaking very generally, I’d say there are two characteristics that set most forms of Judaism apart from Christianity and Islam. First, whereas Christianity and Islam imagine themselves as universal religions, Judaism is usually imagined as a religion for a specific people, for Jews. This of course does not mean that Judaism does not concern itself with humanity as a whole, but the orientation is different.
Second, in comparison to Christianity and Islam, Judaism places less of a stress on belief and more on practice. To be sure, one could formulate core Jewish “doctrines” (and many thinkers have), but it is not a coincidence that the most classical Jewish literature lacks such a formulation. Most Jewish movements are concerned not with what you believe about God, but with how the tradition informs your life: how you pray and celebrate the holidays; how you conduct your family or business affairs; what you eat and so on.
Yancy: An essential part of Judaism is that Jews have a covenant with God — an agreement or commitment between God and his people. Is there anything in this covenant regarding how Jewish people ought to approach death? And does that covenant speak to the promise of an afterlife?
Vidas: The covenant as we find it in the Hebrew Bible is about life, not about death. It promises, to those who keep it, a long and prosperous life (see, for example, Deuteronomy 6:2, in which one keeps the commandments so that “your days may be long”) rather than an afterlife. In fact, the Hebrew Bible mentions neither heaven nor hell: it speaks of “she’ol,” a dark underworld to which everyone goes after death, regardless of how they acted during their lifetime. There is also only one chapter in the entire Hebrew Bible that refers explicitly to a collective resurrection of the dead in the future (Daniel 12).
In contrast with the “this world” emphasis of these biblical manifestations of the covenant, we find already the earliest rabbinical texts looking increasingly toward another world. What the rabbis meant by this usually was not the immediate afterlife following a person’s death, but rather the afterlife following resurrection of the dead at the end of times. At the same time, we see from the Second Temple period onward the development of the idea that different souls have different destinies immediately after death. The righteous are rewarded in heaven and the wicked are punished in hell. The distinctions between these two kinds of afterlife, the immediate one and the eschatological one (end-of-times version), are often unclear, and the way these elements are imagined varies greatly among different Jewish texts and authors.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/opin ... ogin-email
‘I Believed That I Would See Her Again’
A Christian theologian recounts how her mother’s death affirmed her faith and belief in the afterlife.
This month’s conversation in our series exploring religion and death is with Karen Teel, who has been a member of the department of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego since 2007. Her research and teaching focus on the essential beliefs of Christianity and the theological engagement with the problems of racism and white supremacy. She is the author of “Racism and the Image of God.” — George Yancy
Excerpt:
Yancy: We are concentrating in these discussions on learning about and understanding religious conceptions of death. How is the reality of death conceptualized in your faith?
Teel: Death is conceptualized as a transition from this life into eternal life. Christianity teaches that God is eternal; this world came from God and will eventually return to God. In that sense, this life is temporary. Moreover, God created humans with immortal souls, so the death of a human being is not the end. The body dies while the soul continues to live.
When this world comes to an end, Christianity teaches, Jesus, who has already been raised from the dead, will return to oversee the general resurrection of the dead and the last judgment. The bodies of those who have died will be resurrected — rendered alive anew in a glorious, immortal state — and reunited with our souls. The bodies of those who have not yet died also will be transformed into this new state. And Jesus will separate us into two groups, those who will be eternally rewarded and those who will be punished. Christians traditionally believe that heaven is where God is and hell is where God is not, but I like the idea, suggested in the teaching of one of my graduate school professors, Father Michael Himes, that we may all have the same destiny — to spend eternity being loved by God. For those who want God’s love, this will be heaven; for those who don’t, it will be hell.
For Christians, everything that God created is good, and God will not allow anything that is good to pass away. We are never alone, in this life or in eternity. The death of a loved one brings profound sadness. But it is a temporary separation; we hope and believe that we will see each other again. Death is not a separation from God but a return to God. When a Christian dies, we say that they have gone to be with God. And when we die, we will join them.
Yancy: This all seems to work out well for faithful Christians, but what about atheists? Should they fear death?
Teel: No more than anyone else. In the 1960s, the Catholic Church’s teaching on non-Christian religions developed beyond the ancient notion that only Christians could be saved. Now the church teaches that, under certain conditions, people who do not identify as Christians may be saved. Personally, I believe that whenever a person does their best to live rightly, according to the principles they know to be true, God honors that effort. Nothing good will be lost.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/opin ... 778d3e6de3
A Christian theologian recounts how her mother’s death affirmed her faith and belief in the afterlife.
This month’s conversation in our series exploring religion and death is with Karen Teel, who has been a member of the department of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego since 2007. Her research and teaching focus on the essential beliefs of Christianity and the theological engagement with the problems of racism and white supremacy. She is the author of “Racism and the Image of God.” — George Yancy
Excerpt:
Yancy: We are concentrating in these discussions on learning about and understanding religious conceptions of death. How is the reality of death conceptualized in your faith?
Teel: Death is conceptualized as a transition from this life into eternal life. Christianity teaches that God is eternal; this world came from God and will eventually return to God. In that sense, this life is temporary. Moreover, God created humans with immortal souls, so the death of a human being is not the end. The body dies while the soul continues to live.
When this world comes to an end, Christianity teaches, Jesus, who has already been raised from the dead, will return to oversee the general resurrection of the dead and the last judgment. The bodies of those who have died will be resurrected — rendered alive anew in a glorious, immortal state — and reunited with our souls. The bodies of those who have not yet died also will be transformed into this new state. And Jesus will separate us into two groups, those who will be eternally rewarded and those who will be punished. Christians traditionally believe that heaven is where God is and hell is where God is not, but I like the idea, suggested in the teaching of one of my graduate school professors, Father Michael Himes, that we may all have the same destiny — to spend eternity being loved by God. For those who want God’s love, this will be heaven; for those who don’t, it will be hell.
For Christians, everything that God created is good, and God will not allow anything that is good to pass away. We are never alone, in this life or in eternity. The death of a loved one brings profound sadness. But it is a temporary separation; we hope and believe that we will see each other again. Death is not a separation from God but a return to God. When a Christian dies, we say that they have gone to be with God. And when we die, we will join them.
Yancy: This all seems to work out well for faithful Christians, but what about atheists? Should they fear death?
Teel: No more than anyone else. In the 1960s, the Catholic Church’s teaching on non-Christian religions developed beyond the ancient notion that only Christians could be saved. Now the church teaches that, under certain conditions, people who do not identify as Christians may be saved. Personally, I believe that whenever a person does their best to live rightly, according to the principles they know to be true, God honors that effort. Nothing good will be lost.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/opin ... 778d3e6de3