09-15-2004, 02:48 AM
Bismillah
"Wheresoever you may be, death will overtake you even if you are in fortresses built up strong and high!" (Qur'an 4:78)
It is reported that al Bara bin Azib said: "We went out with the Prophet in order to participate in the funeral rites of a man from the Ansar (a group of people from among the Campanions of the Prophet). We arrived at the grave, but the inner chamber had not been prepared yet; so Allah's Messenger sat down facing the direction of the Qiblah, and we sat around him so attentively it was as if the birds were sitting on our heads.
He had a stick in his hand with which he sketched upon the ground. Then he began looking alternately to the heavens and the earth, razing his gaze and then lowering it. Finally, he said two or three times: 'Seek refuge in Allah from the torment of the grave.' Then he said: 'O Allah, verily I seek refuge in You from the torment of the grave.' He repeated it three times, then he elaborated:
'Verily, when the believing servant is leaving this world and entering the next, angels from the heavens descend to him-their faces white with brightness like the sun and carrying with them burial sheets and scents from Paradise. They sit before him at a distance as far as the eye can see.
Then the Angel of Death comes to the person, sits at his head and says: 'O good soul, come out to you Lord's forgiveness and pleasure.' Thereupon, the soul flows out of the body like water flowing from the mouth of a waterskin, and all of the angels between the sky and earth supplicate for Allah's blessing upon him. The doors of heaven are opened for him, and the keepers of these doors all plead with Allah that this soul might pass in front of them as it is being carried upward. The Angel of Death barely recieves the soul in his hands, whereupon the other angels take it from him and wrap it with fragrant winding sheets. This is what is meant by Allah's saying: 'Our messengers seize his soul, and they do not fall short of their duty.'
