Foreword

Of all the stages through which a person will have to pass, death is the most certain. Yet, it is something that few people bother to seriously think about, leave alone prepare for. Everyone who is alive now will be dead sometime in the future. One day, the eyes of those who now see will fade and their tongues will freeze into silence. Every human being will one day be leaving this world, never to return, and will enter a world which he will never leave.

Death is commonly defined as the end of life in an organism. Upon death, apparently all biological and other-related activities of a living being stop, including the mind and the senses. Research suggests that about 150,000 people die every day around the world.

Throughout history, a great majority of people have believed that humans also have a soul in addition to the physical body and that the soul continues in the afterlife, after leaving the body. It is here that religion adds a very important aspect to the concept of death. That is, religion says that there is a very meaningful relationship between the pre-death and the post-death period of a human being. The period before death in the present world can be likened to a nursery where human beings are meant to grow and develop, while in the phase after the present life, a human being will find his true habitat. Human beings grow in the nursery of this present world, and in the world of the Hereafter plants from this nursery are selected for being settled in Paradise.

According to Islam, in the pre-death period, the Creator has bestowed complete freedom to a person. This freedom is meant as a person’s test. Those individuals who give proof of not having misused their freedom and show that they are competent to lead life in a highly disciplined way will be made deserving of entry to Paradise. Paradise is a sublime society where selected persons from the entire human history will be brought together and where they will live for eternity.

Since all of us must, one day or the other, face death, we need to reflect on death often and lead our lives in this world in such a way that when our death finally arrives, we will be adequately prepared for it, having lived as our Creator wanted us to. Hopefully, this book will encourage readers to give attention to the reality of life and death and to thereby lead their lives in a more truly meaningful way.

Wahiduddin Khan
New Delhi, April 21, 2017
[email protected]