Tag: death

Preamble

The corpse of another prominent Nigerian has just been brought back to country for burial today after weeks of self-deception in the name of culture. Such is the common experience especially in the southern part of the county where to be born or to die abroad is ignorantly considered a prestige.

Historians never agreed on when and where the first human couple, Adam and Hawau (Eve), died. Some claimed that they died and were buried in India. Others believed they lived and died in the Gulf area of the Middle East. According to the latter’s account, which Muslims tend to believe, Adam and Hawau met at a place near Makkah called Arafah which later became the general assembly centre of Muslim Pilgrims. The account suggested that after their expulsion from Paradise, they lived partly in the valley of Makkah and partly in Jeddah (75 kilometres away by the Red Sea).

The duo, Adam and Hawau, were said to have left Paradise separately following their expulsion only to meet later at ‘Arafah (which means recognition) after a long period of wondering. Their sojourn in that region of the world shows that the Middle East was the first place of human settlement. The existence of an ancient rectangular house called Ka‘bah is a testimony to this assertion. Hawau was believed to have died and interned in Jeddah, which is why the place was named Jeddah an Arabic word meaning Grandmother.

 

The first human death

Neither Adam nor his wife Hawau knew anything called death until one of their first two sons killed the other.  The two sons – Habil and Qabil (Abel and Cain) had clashed over the choice of a wife. The tussle led to the killing of Habil by Qabil. But the focus here is neither on the cause of their clash nor the killing of one by the other. Rather, it is on the lesson which Allah wanted to teach humanity through that episode.

 

The lesson

Shortly after killing his brother, Qabil fell into a dilemma over what to do with the corpse. He was not worried as much by his conscience over his crime as to what would become of the corpse. But while thinking on what to do, two birds of the Roller family appeared before him and started fighting each other. In no time, one killed the other.  The strange scene attracted the attention of Qabil like a tragic drama. He watched the incident with full attention as the killer bird used its legs to dig a grave-like hole, pushed the corpse of its vanquished brother into it and covered it up. From that wonderful scene, Qabil got the idea of what to do with the corpse of his brother. And he buried him. Thus, the lesson was learnt that this human being created from the earth would eventually return to the earth.

What Qabil did not know at that time, however, was that the two birds, which became his teachers, were Angels. And the lesson learnt from their experience was not just about death and burial but also about when and where to bury a human corpse. If Allah had wanted ceremony and ostentation to be lavished on burial, the killer bird would have demonstrated same in the drama. Qabil did not move the corpse of Habil to any other place for burial because his bird teacher did not do that. Like the killer bird, he also buried his brother at the very spot where the latter breathed his last.

 

When death strikes

In Islam, death is supposed to be the determinant of where the demised should be buried. Death takes life at a particular time and place according to its own natural schedule of duty. It gives no hint of the exact time and place to strike. And, after striking, it does not anticipate the transfer of a corpse across any major distance. That is why the body of any demised person starts to decompose just hours after it becomes lifeless. To confirm this, the Quran chapter 31: 24 says: “No soul knows what it will do tomorrow. No soul knows where it will die and be buried”.

 

The first Muslim group

The first group of the Makkans who embraced Islam at its inception suffered so much severe persecution in the hands of pagans that they had to migrate to Abyssinia (Now Ethiopia) for safety. While there, a number of them died and their wives and children became widows and orphans respectively. All those who died in Abyssinia were buried in that country. Another group of the earliest Muslims migrated to Taif. A number of them also died there leaving widows, widowers and orphans behind. Their bodies were not transferred back to Makkah for burial

Over this, some unbelievers may argue that those emigrants were fugitives who had no courage to bring back the corpses of their relatives for burial. But what of those who died in the battle of Badr in which Makkah pagans came all the way from Makkah, a distance of about 650 kilometers away, to engage the Muslims in a war in Madinah? The corpses of the Muslims who died in that imposed war were buried right there at the battle ground despite the nearness of Badr to Madinah and the Muslims’ victory in that battle?

 

The Prophet’s example

It should be remembered that one of the most painful deaths to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was that of his uncle, Hamzah, the great warrior who fell to the spear of a Makkan pagan in the battle of Uhd and was buried right there at the foot of mountain Uhd in Madinah where the battle took place. In fact, no one who died in another town or country among the Muslims was ever brought back to his original home for burial. Not even the corpse of the Prophet or that of any of his disciples who died in Madinah was returned to Makkah for burial. The reason for this is to avoid the transfer of bitterness and mental agony arising from the death of a person from one place to another.

 

Implication

Not only that, it is also to avoid the unnecessary strain and expenses which such transfer can unleash on some people. That was why great disciples like Abubakr, Umar Bn Khattab, Uthman Bn Affan had to be buried in Madinah where they died rather than Makkah where they were born. Also, Ali bn Abi Talib and Mu’awiyah bn Abi Sufyan were buried in Iraq and Syria respectively where they served as caliphs and died.  Even Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet and 72 others who were massacred by the forces of Yazid bn Mu’awiyah at Karbalau in Iraq had to be buried where they were massacred despite the nobility of their pedigree.

In Islam, death, like birth has no propensity for any display of aristocracy. And, ascribing one to it is a sign of ignorance and primitivism. Islam abhors extravagance in whatever form and it admonishes against it. That is why the great religion does not take kindly to commercial exhibition of coffins and ostentatious funerals. These are actually prohibited in Islam. Coffins can be used to convey corpses from the place of death or mortuary to the cemetery but such coffins must not be ornamentally decorated. Neither must the Muslim corpses be extravagantly shrouded for burial.

The idea of keeping the corpse in a morgue for a long time after death, to allow for ostentatious funeral and extravagant spending in a society where poverty is manifest, is an act of callousness based on ignorance. Neither the expensive shroud nor the ornamented coffin with which the corpse is buried has any benefit to the soul of the deceased. It is sheer wastage, which has no use even for the relatives of the deceased. That idea, which is rampant, especially in some parts of Nigeria today, is hardly different from cremation done by the Buddhists, the Hindus and others with fanfare in the Far East.  Both are a product of ignorance and vain-glory.

 

Blind imitation

As usual, Nigerians do not copy anything negative without surpassing the original. Fraud and narcotics as well as terrorism are some examples. The fashion now in vogue in Nigeria is for any public official or private moneybag to travel abroad for medical treatment at the slightest feeling of an ailment. It is as if Nigerian money is outlawed from providing the best hospital here in Nigeria. The concept is to separate the rich from the poor since an exclusive hospital for the rich will sound illogical in a country peopled overwhelmingly by with paupers. Even when some of those sick travellers will be treated abroad by their fellow Nigerians, they do not see anything wrong in spending their ill-gotten money abroad to the detriment of their home country. They seem to enjoy being flown back home lifeless if only to display aristocracy in death. Thus, your death is not considered newsworthy unless your corpse is flown into the country via Muritala Muhammad International Airport (MMIA), Lagos or Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja for public display. Yet no lesson is learnt that even Muritala Muhammad and Nnamdi Azikiwe died and were buried here in Nigeria. Can anybody cite a clear difference between death in Europe or America and the one in Nigeria? Why must our money be audaciously stolen alive in Nigeria and brazenly spent in death abroad?

 

Extravagance

With the huge amount of money spent by Nigerian sick travellers on treatments abroad and on flying their corpses back home, one can understand why Nigerians are so wretched that their lives are not worth more than a dollar per head per day despite the billions of dollars accruing to the country from our oil wells. It is necessary to thank God however, that though ‘Tokunbo’ products dumped in Nigeria daily are uncountable, the human corpses amongst them are those of the aristocrats and not of the innocent indigent class.

 

Leveller of mankind      

Death is a leveller of mankind. It does not distinguish between the rich and the poor.

We shall all die willy-nilly and we shall all be buried in the belly of the same mother earth where the bones of masters and servants or those of sworn enemies may struggle together for space. Mother earth can be described as man’s inseparable companion. She accompanies man day and night, in life and in death. She surpasses biological mothers in playing her role in the life of man. From a chip of her natural being, man is said to have been created. Allah tells us in Qur’an that “From her (the earth) ‘We’ created you and into her belly ‘We’ shall return you”.

In playing the role of a mother, the earth carries man on her back while the latter remains alive. And in death, she incubates him in her belly in readiness for the resurrection that will see him through the inevitable Day of Judgment. In that process, there is a similarity between the duties of a primary mother (the earth) and that of a secondary mother otherwise known as biological mother especially in respect of conception and delivery.

While the biological mother cares for man only when she and man are alive, the mother earth cares for him both in life and in death. Unlike that of the biological mother, the life span of the mother earth is indefinite.

 

Age of the Earth

Some scientists have given us different ages of the earth using all sorts of technological instruments. But the only authentic statement on that can come from the Almighty Allah Who created the earth. If scientists have the means of telling us the age of the earth, do they also have the means of determining her life span? The earth is not just a carrier of unlimited weight; she is also a scale of unlimited measure. She weighs the load on her head as well as the one in her belly and balances them up for natural equanimity.

Without the earth, mountains and oceans would have no habitat to call their own and the long term fossils which turn into what we call minerals would have had nowhere to hibernate. Before all these and millions of other unidentified matters came into existence, the earth had been. And when all of them might have vanished into permanent oblivion, according to their scheduled time, the earth will continue to be until natural termination time comes.

We know that man was created from the earth. We know that the earth accommodates all living and non-living things on and in her. What we do not know is the source of the earth in creation. From what was the earth created? In luring us to reasoning, Allah has severally called the attention of man to the nature of certain creatures like the mountains, the valleys, the oceans and the seas, the minerals and the human and animal fossils buried in the earth as well as the varieties of plants and insects which dot the earth like a galaxy of stars on the Milky Way. He has also challenged man to observe the very nature of the wonderful carpet called the earth.

 

 No difference

The earth in America or China or Australia is not different from that of Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or Italy. And no earth is superior to another except with Allah’s conferment of sacredness.

Were the aristocrats privileged to calve out a separate portion of the earth for themselves, they would have restricted the masses to a disadvantaged area of the earth. But the thinking of man is different from the planning of Allah. Celebration of funerals so flamboyantly as often exhibited in Nigeria is nothing more than celebration of vanity which fetches the celebrator no profit. In Islam, it is ordained to care for the dead in spirit and in action. But such should not at the expense of the living. Doing so is a glaring evidence of ignorance which no civilised people would ever want to pursue.