All our lives we hear of people dying. Some in our family and some outside. We never go deep into what happens after they leave this world.
As Muslims there is no doubt in our minds about the realities of the grave, the soul as its questioned by the angels, the grave acting as a cooling resting place or a hot tight place, depending on our deeds. It is the first glimpse for us to the heaven or hell that will be our final abode.
All my life I heard the word ‘Barzakh’…in english I heard the word ‘purgatory’. Both may not mean exactly the same thing but the concept is the same, a place where they rest until the day of actual judgement when the reality of where we end up – hopefully in heaven – is made clear. Christians often are sure they will end up in heaven but Muslims don’t like to make assumptions. Anyone with an ounce of humbleness and humility will keep trying to make sure that we not only do good deeds and give up bad ones but also keep praying to God to forgive us and not to show us hell even for a second.
But when someone we love leaves this world, shaking us to the core, we seek answers, want to know more, listen to what others have to say and increase our own knowledge on the subject.
Allah mentions in Surah Al-Rahman, chapter 55 of the Quran:
Just like the salty and the sweet ocean meet each other but do not pass or transgress and there is an invisible barrier between them, there is a barrier between this world and the barzakh world. Once the soul goes there, he or she cannot come back to this one unless Allah chooses to let them come here for some reason. I only even say that because there have been cases of people seeing souls that have died tragically coming back to seek answers. My own aunt had made a promise to someone and after her death was seen by that person to fulfil her promise.
But since that world is not known to us and Allah has not given us that information, we can only put together answers as pieces of a puzzle based on our own intellect.
Some answers from the Quran and Hadith are that when a soul reaches barzakh, they are greeted by their loved ones that had died before them, especially if this soul ends up on the side they did – the good side. They hastily ask about the people they left behind, ‘how is so and so’…the angels then tell them to slow down and let the new soul relax because its all new to them. This shows us that the soul does not forget those they left behind but by asking the new soul it shows us that they don’t know how we are doing. They don’t even know if we died and went to the other side / the bad side – because they would only have met the ones that came to their side of the barzakh.
Think of dreams. When we are sleeping, our body is on earth. People can see us but our soul has left the body and gone to another dimension. We see people there, we have experiences and most of us don’t know we are in a dream but rather that is our reality.
When the family members of the deceased pray for him and do good deeds, even then the angels tell the soul that your family has sent you a gift and that pleases the soul. Hence its important to keep praying for them, talking to them, doing the good deeds they did, promoting their good work – for they will receive all that via angels as our gifts to them.
Another information that I came upon is that the souls meet each other in the grave – that is why putting them in a clean shroud and putting scent on them is recommended. What a beautiful thought that is!
May we meet our loved ones in a beautiful Barzakh and finally in the highest level of heaven. Ameen.
Quran: 23: 99-100
The Saudi Expat 