What Should We Do When We Are About to Die?

Each and every one of us will, one day, be on the verge of our deaths, staring at the end of our lives, the end of our choices, the end of our actions. We will only take with us what we did before that time. There will be no going back, and there will be nothing more left to do. We will be on the verge of the end of our lives, staring into our unknown eternal futures—will we go to Paradise? Or … (I won’t complete the sentence. The thought is too terrifying.) 

Allah Most High sent his Holy Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) to reassure us. Three days before he himself breathed his last, the Holy Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, "Let every one of you see well that he never, ever dies unless he is thinking well of Allah." (Muslim) 

The Holy Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is telling us that at the moment when we die, when the Angel of Death takes our souls, when we breathe our last, that we should not be uneasy, that we should not be uncertain. Instead, we should be happy and unshakably certain that our deaths will take us to our Lord’s mercy and forgiveness, not because of what we did, but because who our Lord is: He loves to have mercy and He loves to forgive.

Allah Most High mentions His mercy throughout the Qur’an. Every chapter except one begins with, “In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful—al-Rahman—and Most Compassionate—al-Rahim.” And the Holy Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) told us that Allah divided mercy into one hundred parts, kept ninety nine of them with Himself (that’s what we’ll see after we die), and sent down to us just one of those hundred parts, and that it is because of that one part that all creatures have mercy on each other, so that even a horse lifts its hoof away from its colt out of fear that it might harm it. (Bukhari)

Allah Most High also mentions His forgiveness throughout the Qur’an. Verse after verse ends with the statement that Allah is Most Forgiving—al-Ghafur. Allah Most High also describes Himself as the Forgiver of Sins—Ghafir al-Dhanb—as the One Who Erases Sins—al-‘Afuww, and the One Who Accepts Our Repentance Time and Time again—al-Tawwab. And the Holy Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) told us that Allah loves to forgive so much that if we didn’t disobey Him, He would have destroyed us and created another people who would disobey Him and then ask Him to forgive them so that He might forgive them. (Muslim)

Allah Most High didn’t create us to be perfect. He created us so that we might acknowledge our sin, our disobedience, our undeservedness, and ask Him to cover us with His mercy and forgiveness. And He wants us to believe this with our entire heart and soul, especially when we are about to die.

That is why, as he was leaving this world, the Holy Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) told us, "Let every one of you see well that he never, ever dies unless he is thinking well of Allah." 

Now, if the time that we die is unknown, then the only way to ensure that we are thinking well of Allah Most High when we die is to regularly think well of Him while we are still alive. 

The Holy Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) taught us that Allah Most High says, “I am as my servant thinks me to be, so let him not think of me anything but good.” It is part of our faith, part of our religion, to believe with all of our heart and soul that the future bodes well, that Allah Most High is keener for our interests that we are for our own, that He loves to have mercy, to give, and to forgive. And Allah Most High told us, in this hadith—“I am as my servant thinks me to be”—that if we have this optimism, we will certainly find it fulfilled in the course of our lives. 

If we get ill, and we have faith that Allah Most High will take care of us, cure us, and make our illness a means of unexpected good, we will find that in the course of our lives. If we lose our jobs, and we have faith that Allah Most High will take care of us, replace our loss with something better, and make it a means of unexpected good, we will find that in the course of our lives. If we are let down by someone we loved, and we have faith that Allah Most High will take care of us, restore our relationship or turn us towards something better, and make it a means of unexpected good, we will find that in the course of our lives. “I am,” Allah Most High says, “as my servant thinks me to be.”

The Holy Prophet’s sincere counsel to us (Allah bless him and give him peace) as he left this world was to practice this optimism while we live, and to cling to it with our hearts and souls as we die. "Let every one of you see well,” he said, “that he never, ever dies unless he is thinking well of Allah." That is what we should do when we are about to die.

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