Life's True Companions: Deeds That Endure Beyond Death

Opening Praise and Salutation

الحمد لله الخالق الوجود من العدم، وجاعل النور من الظلام، وملقي التوبة على الندم، ومخرج الصبر من الألم، فنشكره على المصائب كما نشكره على النعم، ونصلي على رسوله الأكرم، ذي الشرف الأسمى والنور الأتم، وخاتم النبيين والكتاب المحكم، الذي بشّر به عيسى ابن مريم، ودعا لبعثته إبراهيم عليه السلام حين كان يرفع قواعد بيت الله المحرم. أما بعد:

Allah says in His noble Book, after seeking refuge:

And the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2459)

"The wise person is the one who takes account of himself and works for what comes after death, and the incapable person is the one who follows his desires and entertains vain hopes about Allah."

The Wisdom of Ḥātim al-Aṣamm

Respected audience, dear respected brothers and sisters, I would like to start off with the statement of the tābi'ī Ḥātim al-Aṣamm, who happens to be the student of Shaqīq al-Balkhī — may Allah have mercy on him. Imam Ghazālī — may Allah have mercy on him — frequently makes mention of them in his book Iḥyā' 'Ulūm al-Dīn.

He says:

"I looked towards the creation of Allah and I found that each and every single individual is forced to depart from his beloved ones."

When you look at the material possessions of this world, you find that no matter how long you live, there is going to come a day when you have to depart from those beloved things. The best of creation on the face of this planet was Rasulullah ﷺ. He says himself:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 3615; Sunan Ibn Mājah, Hadith 4308)

"I am the best of the creation of Allah and I am not arrogant about it." — Even he had to depart this world one day. And Allah, when He saw the extreme love that the ṣaḥābah — the companions — had for Rasulullah ﷺ, He basically prepared them for his death when He mentioned in the Qur'an:

"Verily, O Muḥammad ﷺ, there is going to come a day when you will have to depart this world — when you will die — and all of these companions who are around you will also have to leave this world one day."

So Ḥātim al-Aṣamm says: inni naẓartu ilal khalq, fa-ra'aytu kulla wāḥidin yufāriqu maḥbūbahu — I found that each and every single thing in this world is forced to depart from its beloved, be it a material possession. Even the best material possessions that you can get in this world, they come with a bumper-to-bumper warranty — there is a 100,000 mile warranty or a 10-year warranty, whichever one comes first. After that there is no guarantee whatsoever as to how long it is going to survive. This is the love for the material possessions that we have, and we are forced to depart from them — sometimes willingly, at other times unwillingly. You buy a brand new phone and it drops. What happens? The screen cracks. Did you willingly depart from it? No, but you have to depart from it regardless.

And at other times we have human beings that we fall in love with — sometimes in the form of a spouse, a father, a mother, a sibling — but a time comes when each one of us is forced to depart from each other.

The Three Companions After Death

The hadith of Rasulullah ﷺ clearly states it when he says:

(Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Hadith 6514; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Hadith 2960)

That when the son of Adam passes away, there are only three things which will accompany him:

1. The Wealth (Māl)

The first thing which will accompany him is his māl — his wealth. And the aspect of wealth is such that within your own worldly life, while you are still alive, the inheritors are busy discussing your wealth. So the wealth is nothing permanent; it is not something that you can remain with for the rest of your life. Even in your worldly life, when you have full power and full capability over yourself, you think: that's it, I'm not going to spend money anymore — and then you go outside and you're forced to spend money. Money is something which is not permanent; it's something that comes and goes; it's something which frequently exchanges hands. So while you're still alive, the people who are going to inherit your wealth are already discussing the distribution of your wealth. The moment you pass away, the wealth will belong to someone else.

And if you think about it, we spend our entire lives — we map our entire lives — around money, starting from the very beginning till the last breath we take, planning: how much money can I make, how much money can I save, how much of it will I be able to use? And we know for sure that a lot of times you're not even able to use 80–90% of your wealth, and you leave it behind for your inheritors who will destroy the wealth in a matter of days. So why invest so much in something which will not even remain with you for a single second the moment you lose power over it?

2. The Family (Ahl)

The second thing to accompany you will be your ahl — your family members, your beloved, the people who you hold most dear, the ones who made sure that not even a single calamity may befall you in this worldly life. Just think about it for a second. If you have a father that you hold dear and he is about to sit on the ground, will you bear that for a second? Normally we are taught that when an elder enters a room we stand up, we leave our seat and we give them the spot. But look at the way the attitude changes the moment they pass away. What do we do? We pray ṣalāt al-janāzah over them, we enshroud them, we carry them over to the graveyard, and then we place them on dust. We never bore that something like that could happen to them in this worldly life when they were alive. But the moment the soul departs from the body, we take them to the graveyard and that is where we place them. The immediate night afterwards, we are sleeping in our warm, comfortable beds while they are alone in their graves. That is the change of attitude.

So, will they be of any use to us in the hereafter, or in the grave? No, nothing whatsoever.

3. The Deeds ('Amal)

Then Rasulullah ﷺ mentioned the last thing which will accompany you — and that is something which will truly accompany you to your grave — which is your 'amal, your deeds.

Choosing What Will Never Depart

When this tābi'ī was saying inni naẓartu ilal khalq — that I saw people and they have things which they hold dear in this world — so I thought about investing in something:

"So I chose for myself something which will never depart from me." And that boils down to two things:

Number one: my relationship with Allah. And that is something that we invest the least amount in. We are very worried about what someone will say. If we are about to take a step in our lives, we are worried sick about what our peers will think, what our family members will say about us. But we never — not even for a single second — stop to think: I am about to commit this action, how will Allah feel about this?

Number two: al-a'māl al-ṣāliḥa — the good deeds.

The Reality of Īmān and Obedience

When it comes to īmān, it is a combination of two things:

The tongue has to utter and the heart has to second what the tongue is saying — meaning the heart has to believe in what the tongue is uttering. A lot of times we find that there is a difference between what our tongues are saying and what our limbs are acting upon.

That is why the poet says:

"I see that you disobey Allah, yet at the same time you say that you hold Allah dear — by my life, I find a huge discrepancy between what your tongue utters and the way you act. If your love for Allah had been true, you would have obeyed Allah at each and every single interval of your life. Verily, a beloved is always obedient towards the one he loves."

So many times we find ourselves saying that I am a true slave of Allah, I am a true slave of Rasulullah ﷺ, that I want to make sure that I follow each and every single sunnah of Rasulullah ﷺ — but nothing from head to toe do we actually look like our beloved messenger ﷺ. And when the time comes to obey Allah, we start to follow our whims and emotions.

The Example of the Ṣaḥābī at the Roman King's Gathering

When you look at the lives of the ṣaḥābah — may Allah be pleased with all of them — you find that they were not even able to bear a single second of disobedience of Allah. We find the example of that ṣaḥābī who was in a gathering — a gathering of the Roman king, and the Romans were a superpower of that time — and one of the morsels of food fell down. He bent down to pick it up. The person sitting next to him said: "Don't do that, it will seem as if you have never had food to eat." The ṣaḥābī's answer was very unique. He said: "Should I forego the sunnah of my beloved Rasulullah ﷺ for these individuals? No." They did not disobey Allah, they did not go against the sunnahs of Rasulullah ﷺ, not even for a single second.

The Definition of Good Deeds

When it comes to al-a'māl al-ḥasana — the good deeds — the definition of which is each and every single thing which pleases Allah — we were not left to our own choice. Many times we have this attitude towards the deen of Allah that as long as I can follow my passions and my desires, and as long as I can subject the deen of Allah to my desires, I am fully willing and capable of obeying Allah. But the moment something goes against what I want, that is the moment my disobedience starts.

This is something that we notice on a daily basis. People frequently approach the ulamā and they want to ask questions about the deen. You can immediately tell: if the answer falls in line with what they want to do, they would be very happy and they are willing to do whatever they can to fulfill that obligation. But the moment they see that the answer goes against their interests and against what they want to do, they are already forming ways and trying to find loopholes to go against the answer they have been given.

The Two Benefits of Good Deeds

1. In the Grave

When the ahl — the family members — pick up the body and they accompany it to the graveyard and then they place it in the grave, Allah says:

"Verily We created you from this dust, and one day you will be returned back to this dust, and you will turn into dust once again, and your resurrection will happen from this very dust on the Day of Judgment."

The hadith mentions that the mayyit — the dead body — can hear the receding footsteps of those who placed him in the grave as they are departing. Then Rasulullah ﷺ mentioned:

(Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Hadith 1338; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Hadith 2870)

Two angels come. Now depending on the way you lived your life, that is how the angels will look. If your life had been lived according to the orders of Allah and the sunan of Rasulullah ﷺ, they will come in a very beautiful form — they will be extremely handsome — and the moment the mayyit sees them, he will become extremely happy. But if you had spent your life in the disobedience of Allah, they will be extremely scary. And that is when the questions of the grave will start — the questions of mā dīnuk, man rabbuk — and you will be shown a likeness of Rasulullah ﷺ and you will be asked about him.

If you have lived your life according to amal — not just what the tongue was saying — it will be very easy for you to answer those questions. Only a person who has truly lived his life according to deeds will be able to answer. That is why the 'ulamā say that the 'amal that you had been accumulating in this world will surround you from all four sides. All those long nights standing up in the month of Ramadan, all that recitation of the Qur'an — the ṣalāh will go towards the head and say: "You do not have a direct path towards this individual; I am here for his protection." The angels will try to come from the right side, and the recitation of the Qur'an and the ṣalāh will protect that side. Similarly, each and every single side of yours will be protected, and each one will say: "You do not have a direct path towards this individual."

2. On the Day of Judgment

And on the Day of Judgment, these good deeds will become a means, as Allah mentions:

"On the Day of Judgment We will place just scales — scales that will do justice — and these good deeds, these a'māl al-ḥasana, will weigh down the scales in our favor." On a day about which Allah says:

A day on which a person will run away from his blood brother, mothers will run away from their children. No one will want to give a single ḥasana — a single good deed — to anyone in the hereafter. So that is the investment for the hereafter.

3. The Beautiful Life in This World

But when it comes to this worldly life, I would like to mention the āyah in which Allah mentions:

"Whoever from the creation of Allah commits a good deed — whoever indulges in a'māl al-ḥasana — We will give him a beautiful life in this world." Now normally when we think of a beautiful life, the first thing that comes to our mind is extensive wealth. But by this time we know that wealth is not a guarantee of happiness. When Allah mentions فَلَنُحْيِيَنَّهُ حَيَاةً طَيِّبَةً, by that Allah means a pure, peaceful, and beautiful life in this world.

Conclusion

We ask Allah to give us the tawfīq to indulge in worthwhile investments, just like the tābi'ī who said:

"So I chose for myself a friend which will never depart from me" — and those are his good deeds. May Allah give us the tawfīq to invest in these good deeds, and may Allah make our good deeds a source of blessing and a source of elevation for us in this world and in the life hereafter.