Death:
The Greatest Means of Reformation

We should remember death often. Death will make one completely helpless. This aspect of death is the greatest means of reform for man in this world.

According to a tradition, the Prophet of Islam said: “Remember death often.” (Sunan Ibn Majah, Hadith No. 4258) But it is strange that death is the thing which is seldom thought of in people’s lives. The reason could be that man’s DNA contains each and everything except for prescience of the event of death. But there is no need to include death in the DNA for it to be remembered. On a daily basis, people keep dying and this incident happening every day should be enough for people to remember their own death. They should not be oblivious of their eventual death, even for a moment.

Death is like a frontier. On the one side of death is the present world which can be likened to a green garden. On the other side of death is the world of the Hereafter which is like a desert. At the time of death what happens is that all of a sudden man leaves the present green world for a limitless expanse of a desert. He suddenly finds that now he can never return to the green garden of the world. Beyond is the vast desert where nothing exists to support life.

According to a Hadith, the event of death suffices as a reminder to man. (Shu’abul Iman, Hadith No. 10072) This means that if man continues to remember death, this alone will be sufficient for his reform. The truth is that the remembrance of death, in the terminology of the carom board, is like a master stroke which revolutionizes man’s whole life.

In the present world, man lives on the strength of various supports. All these supports make man oblivious of the reality. It is death which reminds him of the day which will come when all these supports will no longer exist. The moment of death will make him helpless. This is the aspect of death due to which death has been described as the greatest means of reform.