Reading Our Own Funeral Prayers

Once, a Muslim man died, and after the funeral prayers were said, he was buried in a graveyard. A friend of mine went to attend the funeral prayers. The prayers were just about to start when a person who was standing next to him asked him, “Should I make the intention of offering farz (obligatory) or optional prayers?” My friend replied, “Make the intention of offering your own funeral prayer!”

As you can imagine, the man was really taken aback!

Later, my friend explained to the man that offering funeral prayers on the occasion of someone’s death is not a mere ritual. Rather, it is a reminder of a very serious reality—of the fact that just as the person who has died has encountered death, one day, we, too, will meet the same fate. To say funeral prayers in congregation is actually a reminder of this fact.

A truly meaningful funeral prayer is one in which someone else’s death provokes you to remember your own impending death. It leads you to realize that whatever has happened with the deceased is bound to happen with you as well. If this is how you think when you see a dead person, when you attend a funeral prayer you will feel that you are praying at your own funeral.

We should be constantly aware of death. We must think of it often. A person who is so heedless that someone else’s death does not provoke him to think of his own impending death is a cold, unfeeling stone. To remember death often is an attribute of a truly sensitive person. Not to remember death is a sign of extreme insensitivity.