By: Ustad Bilal Assad
First of all, the realm of barzakh is life which is a barrier, between the world in which we live and a world that we cannot understand. This is because the realm of barzakh is life with its own reality. The realm of barzakh is not like this world and it is also not the realm of the afterlife (doomsday). He lies between the two.
Allah says in the Quran about two seas meeting in this world. He said:
“He let two seas flow which both then met, between the two there was a boundary that neither of them crossed. (Qs. Ar-Rahman[55]:19-20)
In the verse above, Allah uses the word barzakh to describe the barrier between the two seas. And the word barzakh is also used to describe life after death before the end of the world. Allah says in the Quran:
“And before them is a wall until the day they are resurrected.” (Qs. Al-Mu'minuun[23]: 100)
This shows that there is a barrier between two lives that does not mix with the world we live in now. You don't know what happened to the people who died, and they don't know what happened to you. And you can't understand it.
You only understand it when you die.
This is the realm of barzakh, a barrier between this life and the next life when you die before you resurrected. My brothers/sisters in Islam, right when you die, the soul begins to experience the realm of barzakh.
If you want to understand it better with a simple example, imagine you dream while you are sleeping. Your body is in the room and other people can see your body, they can touch your body. But your soul is in dreamland. Your spirit does something else, sees something else, and hears something else. Is not it? It exists in a different realm, sometimes you don't even know where you are. But your body is on the bed. For other people around you, what they see is your sleeping body.
Some people who sleep don't even realize that they are sleeping, they think it is reality. And some people know they are sleeping when they dream. Have you ever felt that? This is called lucid dream.
So the world of barzakh is similar to when your soul comes out while you are sleeping. You don't need oxygen for your soul in dreamland. Have you ever dreamed of being able to breathe underwater? Your spirit does not need what your body needs. Our body survives on food and oxygen but our spirit does not.
So if you can understand dreams, then you can understand barzakh. I think no one understands the phenomenon of dreams and how the soul comes out while sleeping, and likewise we cannot understand the realm of barzakh.
The realm of barzakh my brothers/sisters is a temporary stop between this life and the hereafter . It is in this realm of barzakh that a person will be shown whether he will go to hell or heaven.
And also as in the hadith that Rasulullah s.a.w said that the grave is the first part of the afterlife. If someone is saved from the torment and torment of the grave, then what will happen afterward will be better and easier. He will be saved from greater things. If he is not saved from the torment of the grave, then whatever will come after will be worse.
My brothers/sisters, when someone goes to the grave, Rasulullah s.a.w told us that a person takes 3 things with him. One stayed with him and two returned. Rasulullah s.a.w said that our families and wealth will return. What stays with us in the grave are our good deeds and bad deeds. It is those practices that will determine where you will go and what will happen in your grave.
The Messenger of Allah s.a.w also told us that deceased people visit each other in their graves. Because he s.a.w said "When you bury a deceased person, make the shroud good, and give them perfume, prepare them because the grave experts visit each other."
Rasulullah s.a.w also told us that animals can hear someone being punished in his grave. Aisyah r.a told about two Jewish women who were her neighbors. Aisyah said, “Two old Jewish women entered my house in Medina one day and they said to me, “The grave experts are being punished in their graves. So I told them 'You're lying. The grave masters will not be punished.' Then they went away. Then Rasulullah s.a.w came in and I said 'O Rasulullah,
two Jewish women came to me and said that grave experts were tortured in their graves.' Rasulullah s.a.w said 'The two Jewish women spoke the truth. The grave masters are tortured to the point that animals can hear them, but humans and jinn cannot hear them."
I don't want to scare you, but it is our practices that will of course determine how we will be in the grave, whatever whether our grave will be a garden from the garden of heaven or an abyss from the abyss of hell. And the Prophet himself often prayed to be protected from the punishment of the grave. And we must also do this as creatures who repeatedly sin. And do good deeds, as Allah says in the Qur'an:
"Indeed those who believe and do righteous deeds, they are the best of creatures." (Qs. Al-Bayyinah[98]:7)
May God open our graves and keep us away from the painful punishment of the grave. Amen ya robbal alamin.
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