Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | The Sunday Guardian | February 05, 2017, p. 12

“Every human being is bound to taste death”, the Quran (3:185) reminds us. Our deaths have been decided by God. We are brought to life by God’s decision. Likewise, death, too, happens because God wills it so.

Unlike what many people believe, death is not an accident. Rather, it is a test. If you think of death as an accident, it leads you to be miserable. On the other hand, if you accept death as a test, you can be fired with a new determination. You will think to yourself, “Till now, I was being tested through life. Now my examination will happen through death. My success in this lies in my seeing it as an examination, and I should do my best to do well in this examination!”

None of us die at the wrong time, at the time we were not meant to. Everyone who is born into this world has been born in order to go through an examination. For each of us, a certain period of time has been decreed for this examination.

Once this period of time is over, the angel of death appears to take our souls and convey us to the world of the Hereafter.

We need to be realistic—to face the reality as it is—on the question of death. We need to accept death as an undeniable fact.

We need to take death as a means to learn appropriate lessons, not as something to regret or mourn about.

The Prophet said that death demolishes all desires. (Musnad Ahmad) This means that if someone has understood the reality of death, he will become exceedingly serious.

He makes the world to come after death, instead of this world, his goal. His life becomes entirely centred on the Hereafter.