FUNERAL SERVICE

Trigger Your Mind

THE following is an account of the funeral service of a dead person. The man’s body was washed, and he was wrapped up in a new sheet. People recited the prayers which they usually do on such occasions, and then they lifted the corpse on their shoulders and headed to the empty grave. They lowered the body, with great respect, into the ground and covered it with mud.

Witnessing such a scene could give rise to the question, “Why has Islam ordained such honourable treatment for a dead body?”

It is a fact that after death, a human body is nothing more than dust. But it is treated like a human being. Treating ‘dust’ as one would treat a ‘human being’ is a commandment directed not at the dead body. It has significance for those who are still alive. Through a dead person an important lesson is conveyed to living people—that they, too, will meet precisely the same fate one day. A man who was a living being like any of them is now dead and lies perfectly still.

The value as a live person he commanded in people’s eyes has suddenly been completely ceased. God uses this event to convey a lesson about life to others.

In this way, the living can see themselves in the form of the dead. They can experience death before death arrives.

With great care, people wash and clean and clothe a corpse and carry it to the grave that awaits it. And when they lower the corpse into the grave, they are to remind themselves the words from the Quran where God reveals to them that,

From the earth We have created you, And We return you to it, and from it We shall bring you forth a second time.

Thus the funeral service reminds us of the reality and of our final destination.