six feet deep

assalaamu alaikum

dr. iqbal passed away yesterday. inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi Raji'oon. he was in a coma for nearly a year and just recently woke up a few months ago, only to have a heart attack. may Allah make his sickness and suffering a means for his Forgiveness and grant him the highest of ranks in Jannah, Ameen. his family is awesome. his sons are all huffadh, 2 of them still studying their aalim course in buffalo, and one of them already a mufti in his twenties. he's my teacher and brother. we play football and basketball together. he would always be coming back and forth from the hospital, spending the entire day by his father's side and would only leave to come and teach us fiqh. inshaAllah, he will be one of the teachers in the Dar-ul-Uloom, may Allah bless him.

the janazah was today after jumu'ah. we went to the graveyard for the burial. there were so many people there, and not only from our community but from other communities in silver spring and laurel too. i was thinking about the concept of brotherhood, and how Allah could take into account the shere number of people attending a janazah to forgive His servants sins. when the Sahabah were asked about their fellow Muslim brothers, what would they say? "We know NOTHING about him but GOOD." really, how many of us can do this? and its such a big deal, because when a person dies, and people talk about him, Allah takes that into account as well.

i dunno, its always good to visit the graveyard and see the dirt that will become our bed very soon. the craziest thing is when you're actually inside the grave and helping prop the body up on its right side. sure, the 6 feet high walls of dirt that are surrounding you, the limp body (man dead weight is really heavy) draped in white sheets right next to you, the sides crumbling as dirt and mud fall into the hole as people try to get in and out have their affects, but what you won't notice until you are inside the grave is all the insects. there are so many insects, roaches, centi/milipedes, all those multi legged things you see on fear factor n stuff, they're crawling down there. waiting. just waiting for the body so they can feast on it. and you realize that that is what is going to happen to your body as well. you're gonna be eaten by tiny roaches in your grave. your mouth, ears, nose, hair, is going to decay and be food for the insects in the dirt.

"Every soul shall taste death."

check it out though. i got this problem every time i go to the graveyard, and its always clawing at the back of my mind. aren't we supposed to bury our own dead? aren't we supposed to bury the muslims? the muslims bury the muslims? if we are not even supposed to bury the muslims along with non muslims, should we let non muslims bury our dead?

...

then why do we let them use the machines to finish up what we started? after the body is placed into the hole, everybody is told to take 3 handfuls of dirt and throw it in, reading the ayah:

Minhaa Khalaqnakum, wa feeha nu'eedukum, wa minha nukhrijukum taaratan ukhra.

"From it We created you, and into it We shall return you, and from it We shall bring you out once again."

and then after that, they take shovels and start dropping down the dirt. it only lasts like 5 minutes tho before random uncles are like, "beta, leave it, they will do the rest." c'mon now. are you serious? we got like 100 heads over here! how long and how hard can it be to just finish the job? it seems so superficial to do a lil bit and then QUIT, and let the graveyard ppl come with the machines to finish it! whats that mean? we just wanted to feel good by thinking we were making a difference by scooping in a few shovelfuls of dirt?

i've felt this way ever since i followed a random janazah to the graveyard. it was still during my days in quran class. after prayer, my teacher told me to go to the graveyard with the janazah because there were only a handful of people going. literally, i could count them on a hand (and a half) if i wanted to. but anyways, we went to the graveyard, and after we put the body in, we started filling up the grave. after five minutes, the machine dudes came, but this handful of brothers i was with told him that they would do it themselves. it took a good 30 minutes of just shoveling dirt, but we did it. and wallahi, it feels so much more real and doing justice to the deceased by letting the muslims bury them. and its not hard or impossible. we did it with a few brothers. but when it comes to janazahs that have so many people, we can't take a few minutes and just finish the job instead of leaving it half done and giving up.

i dunno if i'm just making it unnecessarily hard on myself and others, but thats how i feel. i know that i would want to be buried by the people i knew and loved, and not some bobcat machine.