My brothers and sisters,
when you were born, you did not choose which country you would be in.
You did not choose the city, the place.
You did not choose your parents.
You did not choose your race.
You did not choose anything.
Allah chose for you.
Allah decided Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
where He would like you to be, and so you were there.
Let's not let it be a means of arrogance for a person.
We should realize and understand
that it is all part of the greater plan of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
that certain things He does not give you a choice about.
Those things, Allah Almighty has decided for reasons known to Him.
In fact, your parents who gave birth to you did not know you before you were born.
They had no clue.
They had no idea.
They just knew that they are going to have a child.
Once the wife was expecting or once your mother was expecting,
what type of a child, what is going to happen to the child?
All of that is decided only and solely by Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
One of the factors that Allah has kept is a very interesting, beautiful teaching
that your final judgment depends on how your life ends.
It has very little to do with the middle of it, but it's important.
As you do good and you grow older, you get a reward.
You pile up lots of rewards.
But those who pile up rewards are of different categories.
Many of them, unfortunately,
don't realize that they give away the good deeds that they do because of backbiting,
slandering, gossiping, deceiving, cheating, whatever else it may be.
You have wronged a fellow human being.
Your Salah goes to them in payment.
Something else goes to someone else.
By the time you get to the day of judgment,
you did a lot of good deeds, but there's very little left.
So how you ended might not be as grand as people might have thought your life was.
People look at someone, say,
look at that Saint, and then suddenly he passes away
in a condition that is not known as husnal khatimah.
What is the meaning of husnal khatimah?
The Prophet, peace be upon him,
used to make a du'a, O Allah, grant me a good ending.
O Allah, grant me a good death.
Grant me a good ending.
He used to make that du'a and he taught it to us, the supplication.
Allahumma inni as aluka husnal khatimah.
O Allah, I ask you to grant me a good end.
Because there is a hadith that states that a person who does a lot of good
for so many years and suddenly messes up at the end, they've lost.
And the person who's done a lot of bad through his life,
but suddenly made everything right at the end.
They've gained a person who was a disbeliever, and suddenly they became a Muslim.
They believed in Allah and submitted just before they passed on.
They died as submitters. Good news to them.
Islam deletes the bad that was done before it.
The same applies to tawba and repentance.
Whatever was before it is deleted.
So Allah Almighty, we ask Him, Oh, Allah, grant me a good death.
There is another du'a, Oh, Allah,
keep me living upon Islam and iman and grant me death upon Islam and iman,
and resurrect me with the Muslims and the mu'minim, with the good people.
You would like to be remembered for something good.
One of the plans of Allah Almighty is
as you grow up and you grow older, you begin to discover more and more about
the necessary relationship that you need with Allah.
Allah allows you to go through things.
When you are young, many times you are energetic.
Perhaps you come from a middle class family, upper class family,
you might not realize the importance of a connection with Allah because you are young,
you're fit, everything is moving okay when difficulty starts coming.
Only Allah knows what type of du'a you made.
Only Allah knows how much you cried at night.
Only Allah knows what type of softening
of the heart happened as a result of calamity that struck you.
You had a major problem in your life. It softened you.
Did it soften you? Yes.
I started praying. People tell you this.
I did not use to pray until this happened.
When this happened, I changed my life.
What was that thing?
Well, it's considered something negative according to the world.
I lost a loved one, I lost a limb,
something happened to my business, something happened here, there.
I suffered in this way and that way.
Now I turned to Allah and I'm liberated. From what?
From the shackles of shaytan.
You are liberated because now you understand who is Allah.
Sin no longer appeals to you.
In fact, good deeds appeal to you.
You want to do more and more.
Dua of the Prophet, peace be upon him,
O Allah, make beloved to us, iman, belief in you, and beautify it in our hearts.
Oh, Allah, make detested to us, disbelief and sin and all forms of transgression.
Make it detested to us.
When transgression is in front of our eyes, we don't see a sweetness in it.
That's your connection with Allah.
As life progresses, we witness
and we see different people lead their lives in different ways.
Like I say, we only know what we see apparently with our eyes.
But Allah is the judge.
Allah gave you a place of birth,
a date of birth, the parents you will be born to, and every detail in that regard,
your race and whatever else, He chose it for you.
In the same way, Allah says to us,
Allah says, A soul does not know what its substance is going to be tomorrow.
Today you have, tomorrow you might not have.
Today you don't have, tomorrow you might have more than everybody else.
Allah knows. So be humble, that's the message.
Turn to Allah.
Then Allah says, Allah alone knows where He has chosen your spot of death.
Allah chose it. You were born.
The exact spot of death of yours is chosen.
The Hadith says, When Allah has written for you to die somewhere,
He creates a reason for you to arrive at your place of death.
There's a reason. That reason could be business,
it could be tourism, it could be anything, and it could be a good deed.
I tell you, to die in Salah is not
the same as to die while you are oblivious of Allah.
People say, May Allah give me the acceptance to pass away in Sujud / prostration.
My brother, if that is really a du'a, increase your sujud, make more sujud.
There's a greater chance of you.
You hardly pray and you say, Oh, God, grant me death in Sujud.
What Sujud are you going to die in?
Allah gives, but we change our lives.
A good thing, a gift of Allah is that we are not judged by our sins.
We are judged by our repentance.
Subhanallah, what a gift of Allah.
Whatever you did in your past, Allah says, I won't judge you with that.
If you seek forgiveness, I judge you with repentance.
Allah asks His angels, Did he repent? He did.
Give him. In fact, your deeds are weighed,
good deeds and bad deeds, on the scale of the day of judgment.
Allah says, I know you did bad deeds.
You're a human, but if your good deeds are more, good luck to you.
Good news to you. Those whose good deeds on the scale are heavier,
they are the successful ones.
Allah didn't say you did not do bad deeds.
You did a few bad deeds.
Did you make amends?
Did you seek forgiveness?
Like I said earlier, Allah alone knows your tears.
Allah knows what you went through.
Allah knows the Salah you might have fulfilled at night when everyone was asleep.
For Allah to write a death for you in subjud is not a joke.
It's called a good death.
It is something worth speaking about.
It is something worth mentioning.
Imagine the people visiting.
Every one of them visits Baqih, and not once, but so many times.
Imagine one Salah in that masjid is multiplied thousands of times.
Your Janazah is fulfilled in that same masjid.
How many times is that multiplied?
When it s the Prophet says,
Either 10,000 times or 1,000 times better than a prayer anywhere else,
what are the numbers of the people reading Salah on you?
When the Hadith says, if there's a number of people who make
Salah Al Janazah and it's a larger number, nine or so rows that you have,
people would, Insha Allah, be granted forgiveness by Allah because
others would have borne witness for them, made du'a for them.
Never mind nine subs, never mind 900 rows, never mind 9,000 rows.
We're talking of numbers that we don't even realize.
Who are they?
They are people who have come with a soft heart.
What are they doing? Making du'a.
They are people from the descendants
of the Prophet, peace be upon him, making du'a.
When you see a person who passes away
in Medina Munawara, the jostling that happens from the Muslim ummah
who is present in Medina Munawara to carry the Janazah.
You only find the best of the hearts carrying the Janazah.
They take it all the way to the grave.
They will fight to get to that grave and to help, to dig and to help,
meaning to put the body down and to make du'a and to cover and so on.
Do you know why? The hadith says whoever reads
Salat Al Janazah on someone has a mountain full of reward.
And if you follow it through to actually go and do the burial with,
you get two mountains of reward as big as Mount Uhud.
So the people want it.
Mount Uhood is right there.
Imagine your resting place has been chosen.
One hand is the green dome
and subhanallah, there is the Masjid Al Nabawi, a few meters away,
the resting place of Nabi sallalahu alaihi salam, few meters away.
You're resting here, around you, there's all companions,
some of the wives of the Prophet sallalahu alaihi salam, so many more.
The other side, there is Mount Uhood.
This side, there is Khandak.
There, there is the well of Uthman. Here, there is something.
Where do you think Allah chose for you? La ilaha illallah.
May Allah grant us a good death.
Brother Munir Qazi passed away this
morning at Fajr in Medina Munawara, member of our own community.
Like I said, he had his struggles and challenges through his life.
But the point is, look at what Allah gave him at the end.
Something many of us can only make du'a for.
We ask Allah.
People say, Oh, Allah, grant me death in Medina.
The man got it. What type of a death is something I want
to reiterate and repeat as I end my speech here?
A death preceded by an umrah in Ramadan,
which is equivalent to a reward of having made hajj with the Prophet, as I said.
What do you think Allah favored the man with and why?
I don't know, you don't know, perhaps no one knows.
But there has to be something that Allah knows.
Something that Allah knows because Allah chooses and selects.
May Allah Almighty grant all of us a good death.
The moral of this entire speech is number one, we make du'a for the Maghfoor.
May Allah grant him Jannah, forgive his shortcomings.
We do know that millions of people every day will be making du'a for him also.
He probably wouldn't really...
For our du'a is more our benefit, to be honest with you,
and obviously benefit of the deceased to a smaller degree.
But millions of people every day will be visiting him.
They will be making salam to him every minute of the day
because they will be there at Baqi .
You are basically all the time surrounded by all this goodness.
Subhanallah. The moral is,
let's lead our lives in a way that Allah gives us also a good death.
May Allah accept it from us.
May Allah forgive the brother's shortcomings.
Make it easy for his widow, his children.
May Allah Almighty grant us all a lesson from this.
May Allah Almighty truly make us such
that we lead our entire lives in a way that we would like to die.
Because the Prophet says, You die the way you led your life,
and you'll be resurrected the way you passed away.
You're resurrected the way you pass away.