Everything You Must Know About The End of Times | Signs of the Hour Ep. 1
5 Signs That Happened in the Prophet’s ﷺ Lifetime | Signs of the Hour Ep. 2
Was Dajjal Alive During The Prophet’s ﷺ Time? | Signs of the Hour Ep. 3
20 Verses of Qur’an That Protect from Dajjal | Signs of the Hour Ep. 4
When 40 Prophets Were Killed | Signs of the Hour Ep. 5
When Only One Sahabi Was Left In The World | Signs of the Hour Ep. 6
Jerusalem to Constantinople: The Promised Conquests | Signs of the Hour Ep. 7
Acts of God: Disasters Foretold by the Prophet ﷺ | Signs of the Hour Ep. 8
The Rise of the Unqualified | Signs of the Hour Ep. 9
The Night the Qur’an Disappears | Signs of the Hour Ep. 10
The Years of Intense Deception | Signs of the Hour Ep. 11
The 10 Patterns of Religious Corruption | Signs of the Hour Ep. 12
A Beautiful Masjid With Empty Rows | Signs of the Hour Ep. 13
Making Halal What Allah Made Haram | Signs of the Hour Ep. 14
When The Love for Wealth Becomes Violent | Signs of the Hour Ep. 16
How Time Is Shrinking | Signs of the Hour Ep. 17
Playing
Why The Prophet ﷺ Said People Will Envy the Dead | Signs of the Hour Ep. 18
Signs of the Hour
Why The Prophet ﷺ Said People Will Envy the Dead | Signs of the Hour Ep. 18
NOTE: This lecture discusses Islamic teachings about the trials of the end times, including the prophecy that people will wish for death. It is a discussion of Islamic eschatology. Nothing in it is encouragement toward self-harm.
If you are struggling with despair, hopelessness, or thoughts of harming yourself, please contact Naseeha Mental Health for free, confidential, faith-sensitive support. Call or text 1-866-627-3342 or visit https://naseeha.org.
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A narration says that before the Hour a man will pass a grave and say, “I wish I were in his place,” and that it will not be out of longing for Allah but out of exhaustion with life.
The emptiness is the sign, not the hardship. What the same tradition carries is the correction: everyone already in a grave would trade everything they owned for one more day to seek Allah’s pleasure.
Dr. Omar Suleiman reflects on what is left when this world is no longer fulfilling. He is explicit that this is a religious diagnosis of one specific cause and not a statement about mental health or why anyone experiences these thoughts.
Find out which wish for death the Prophet ﷺ forbade, which one he allowed, and the du‘a he taught in relation to this:
اللَّهُمَّ أَحْيِنِي مَا كَانَتْ الْحَيَاةُ خَيْرًا لِي وَتَوَفَّنِي إِذَا كَانَتْ الْوَفَاةُ خَيْرًا لِي
Allahumma ahyini ma kanat al-hayatu khayran li, wa tawaffani idha kanat al-wafatu khayran li.
“O Allah, keep me alive so long as life is good for me, and cause me to die if death is better for me.”
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00So the people under the graves are saying, one more chance. And the people above the graves are saying, not another day. I wish I was the person that was in this grave.
00:09The exhaustion of a person who has been betrayed by the false promises of this dunya. What do you think held Ayyub, peace be upon him, together when everything in the world was taken away from him? Sometimes it's harder to live for Allah than it is to die for Allah.
00:22The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, you're wishing for death and I am with you. When you spiritually die, a person finds themselves not even wanting to physically live. When people no longer find meaning even in the masjids, what's left?
00:44Dear brothers and sisters, when people lose barakah, when wealth is unfulfilling, when people have forsaken the religion for what it is,
00:54when people no longer find meaning even in the masjids, what's left? Right? What's left? The next set of ahadith are ahadith where the Prophet, peace be upon him, basically talks about
01:08when people have been betrayed by false promises and now emptiness leads to them no longer wanting to live.
01:16Now I'm going to start off here by saying that this is a very specific cause for someone not wanting to live anymore, which is that the dunya is no longer fulfilling.
01:29And so the Prophet, peace be upon him, he mentioned this as a sign of the hour.
01:42The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, the hour will not come until a person passes by a grave and he says, I wish I were in his place. In another narration in Sahih Muslim, the Prophet, peace be upon him, said,
02:01He said, by the One in whose hand is my soul, the world will not pass until a man passes by a grave. It's actually a really vivid image that the Prophet, peace be upon him, is giving to us.
02:14That person would throw himself on the grave, like he starts to roll himself in the dirt. He says, I wish I was the person that was in this grave.
02:31And it's not the religion, it's not that he wants to be there because of something righteous. It's not because he envies, for example, the shahid, the martyr. It's not because he envies someone that he believes is having the reward that Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has promised to the believers.
02:45It is out of a sense of hardship. And this is really an important description of the exhaustion of a person,
02:55again, who has been betrayed by the false promises of this dunya. Basically, life has lost meaning because Allah, Mighty and Majestic, says, "Respond to Allah and the Messenger when they call you to that which gives you life."
03:08Respond to the call of Allah and the Messenger when they call you to that which gives you life. Therefore, when you spiritually die, a person finds themselves not even wanting to physically live.
03:20Again, I'm going to qualify this. I'm not speaking from a mental health perspective here. I'm speaking from a deen perspective. The ideation and why people might feel that way, that can have many causes,
03:30but we're talking about a specific one that the Prophet, peace be upon him, is mentioning here as a sign of the hour that people no longer have anything that grounds them in meaning.
03:40And Sheikh Umar, peace be upon him, he ties this directly to disbelief in resurrection. It's really interesting. He talks about the emptiness of not believing in the akhirah, of not believing in the hereafter.
03:52Why? Because if you think about it, the believer has hayba for the grave. He has awe for the grave. He worries what's on the other side of that grave because he's as certain about what's on the other side of that grave as he is about what he's standing on. And he doesn't know what his fate is.
04:06So he would never say, I want to go in there without getting a guarantee from Allah, Mighty and Majestic, that he's actually stepping into a Jannah, that he's stepping into a paradise.
04:16And the belief in hereafter makes every difficulty worth it and makes every reward worth being sought.
04:25So the belief in Jannah is what gives a person life even in the most bitter of moments. And some of the ulama, they reflect, like what do you think held Ayyub, peace be upon him, together when everything in the world was taken away from him?
04:38And Ayyub, peace be upon him, did not wish for death. At no point did Ayyub, peace be upon him, say, just let me die. Instead, he was looking for the establishment of the maqam with Allah, Mighty and Majestic,
04:51the position with Allah, Mighty and Majestic, that Allah would have mercy on him and that Allah, Mighty and Majestic, would maximize his reward. And so here's where this entire discussion gets interesting.
05:03It's not just wishing for death. It's why you wish for death. And there is an entire literature, set of literature about what's permissible in terms of wishing for death,
05:15what's prohibited, and what's even praiseworthy when it comes to wishing for death. That it goes back to what drives the person to wish for death. And let's be clear, the believer does not romanticize death.
05:28And as some of the ulama say, sometimes it's harder to live for Allah than it is to die for Allah. Some people look at death as an escape. The believer is not looking at death as an escape from the difficulties of life. But what is it that the believer would want?
05:40And this is where you find the hadith of the Prophet, peace be upon him, visiting a young man who wished for death in his time. And the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, You're wishing for death and I am with you. We're not talking about the end of times. You're wishing for death and I am with you.
05:54And he, peace be upon him, said, Let not one of you wish for death because of a harm that has befallen him. Let not one of you wish for death because of a harm that is coming towards them
06:07or because of the hardship that they are facing. But if you're going to make that du'a anyway. But if you're going to make that du'a anyway. You're going to make that du'a anyway. That's what's on your heart. You're going to make that du'a anyway. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, "O Allah, give me life as long as life is good for me,
06:21and give me death when death is good for me." O Allah, give me life so long as you know that life is better for me.
06:32And give me death when you know that death is better for me. Ibn Hajar, peace be upon him, he talks about the paradox here. And it is a paradox.
06:43He says that there is the person who wishes for death because of the moral failures of himself.
06:52He decayed so much and he wasted himself in this dunya and it didn't give him anything. On the other hand, there is a believer that wishes for death due to the moral decay of society.
07:05And so it is out of khawf and dhihab ad-din. A fear of losing the religion. And because they want to maintain that religion, at that point there would come a time where a believer would say,
07:17I want to die now because I want to escape a fitna that might take away my deen. And my deen is more precious to me than even this dunya. It is not that he hates the dunya, it is that he loves this deen more than the dunya.
07:29The opposite of what the Prophet, peace be upon him, described, al-wahn. The condition of the believers where they become so weak and it is easy to prey upon them because they love the dunya too much and they hate death. No, this is different.
07:43It is not that they love or hate the dunya. It is that they love the deen so much that they don't want anything to get in the way of that relationship with Allah, Mighty and Majestic, or potentially compromise the reward that they have.
07:56Some of the scholars also mention here the incident of Maryam, peace be upon her. When Maryam, peace be upon her, says,
08:08When the pain of childbirth came to her and it became so severe, she said, I wish I died before this and was completely forgotten. By the way, I've heard some modern commentators, and I think it's an inappropriate commentary,
08:22to say that, see, when a person gets hit by hardship, even Maryam, peace be upon her, wished for death. No, there are two tafsirs that are acceptable here.
08:31One of them is that Maryam, peace be upon her, thought she was actually dying. And so she was asking for the hastening of that death. Like it's here, so khalas, let it pass now.
08:43And of course when a woman is giving birth, she might feel that way that she's being pushed to the brink of life, to the brink of death. And Maryam, peace be upon her, is delivering all by herself as a teenage girl in the middle of nowhere
08:57with all of the pain and the trauma of that pregnancy and not knowing what's going to come. So that's the first tafsir. The second tafsir, which is actually the majority tafsir,
09:05is that Maryam, peace be upon her, was asking Allah to die before that because of the slander that would come and what would happen to the aspersions that would be cast towards the people of deen,
09:18the people of nabuwwah, the people of religion and the people of prophethood. The slander that would come would be delegitimizing in its nature. Ya laytani mittu qabla hadha wa kuntu nasyan mansiyah.
09:28So it was not that Maryam, peace be upon her, wanted to die because of the pain, right? It's because of something else. And so how do we balance these two things?
09:41So I'm going to read a few of these narrations, and then insha'Allah we'll reconcile between them. There is a narration which is authentic, but it's mawquf to Abdullah ibn Amr, may Allah be pleased with both of them,
09:53where he said there will come a time for the people when the best of what they possess and the most beloved thing to them will be death. He said that there will come a time when the best of what people possess
10:06and the most beloved thing to them will be death. And he said, and the hour will not be established until death is more beloved to the believer than a herd of red camels.
10:16He said, and the hour will not be established until death is more beloved to the believer than a herd of red camels. Of course, when the Prophet, peace be upon him, would use that language of a herd of red camels, it meant the dunya and everything in it.
10:30And so he's giving us that paradox. What is the timing that is being spoken about here? It's for the community's calculation, for the ummah's calculation,
10:43the time of fitna, where there is no more islah, where there is no more good and there's so much confusion that a person is merely trying to flee from that confusion. You no longer have the ability to rectify or correct,
10:55you just want to flee from that confusion. And Islam has become so strange that you become what the Prophet ﷺ described as al-ghuraba, those who withdraw themselves from the people. So this is the timing.
11:09This is the time of withdrawal. On the individual level, everyone knows their own limit.
11:19And the righteous will ask Allah ﷻ as they see the clock turning and as they see the condition changing,
11:28that Ya Allah, you know me better than I know myself. So if you know that death is better for me, meaning it's going to protect me from this fitna, then take me right now.
11:40And if you know that life is better for me, then let it continue. Notice that the saying of the Prophet ﷺ is not "if you know that this life is...
11:52al-mawt arah li..." that death is easier for me or more comforting to me. No, that death is better for me, that life is better for me. You know Ya Allah, you know the condition of my heart, you know where I am right now.
12:06And some of the saliheen, especially from the companions of the Prophet ﷺ, I mean they knew where they were at their point of history. They heard directly from the Prophet ﷺ about the end of times.
12:17And when they started to see those signs, even the closest people to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, they started to make those types of requests. So you'll see Sayyidina Ali ﷺ was in Kufa in Iraq.
12:31And he felt the tension with the people in Kufa. And he said, Ya Allah, I have grown wary of them and they have grown wary of me. Wa karihtu-hum wa karhoon. And I hate them and they hate me.
12:43Like our relationship is becoming untenable. The fitna is growing. Fa abdilni bihim man huwa khayrun li minhum. Ali ﷺ was so eloquent.
12:55He says, so grant me in exchange those who are better for me than them. I don't want to be surrounded by them anymore. I want to be surrounded by better than them. Wa abdilhum bihi man huwa sharrun lahum minni.
13:07And give them someone who is worse for them than me. Like if they were messing with me, if they treated me this way, like let them taste what it really is like. Like let them see the fruits of their injustice. And that's powerful by the way.
13:21Sometimes you run a righteous man out until that righteous man prays against you and you end up crying for the man that you used to oppress. How many times does that happen in communities?
13:35How many times do the people run their imam out and then they call the imam back? Alhamdulillah, no one is being run out of Valley Ranch, only on the pickleball court. But like how many times do you see that story play out? Or someone is oppressed as a volunteer
13:49or someone like really tried to do good and the people hurt that person so much. And then Allah 'Azza wa Jall punishes them with worse, and then they wish for the first one back. So Ali radiallahu 'anhu was recognizing where he was at.
14:02There's even SubhanAllah a more specific narration. And this narration is authentic by the way. It's from Abu Hurayrah radiallahu ta'ala 'anhu. It's narrated by Ibn Abi Shaybah and it's authentic that Abu Hurayrah made a very specific du'a.
14:16He said, Allahumma inni a'udhu bika min ra'si al-sittin wa imarat al-subiyan. Oh Allah, I seek refuge in you from reaching the year 60
14:28and from the leadership of the young fool. I seek refuge in you from living to see the year 60 and from the leadership of the young fool.
14:41Now here's the thing, what happened in the year 60? Yazid ibn Mu'awiyah took over the Caliphate. What happened in the year 61? Al-Husayn radiallahu ta'ala 'anhu was killed in Karbala. When did Abu Hurayrah radiallahu 'anhu die?
14:55The year 59. And by the way, this is an authentic narration about Abu Hurayrah and there's something that parallels it in Sahih al-Bukhari where Abu Hurayrah radiallahu ta'ala 'anhu said,
15:06Samiatu al-sadiq al-masduq yaqul salallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, I heard the truthful and the trusted one say, "Halak ummati 'ala yada ghilman min Quraysh," Fa qala Marwan, Ghilman? So Abu Hurayrah radiallahu 'anhu said
15:20that the Prophet salallahu 'alayhi wa sallam said, "The destruction of my ummah will be at the hands of young boys from Quraysh." So Marwan said, "Young boys?" Abu Hurayrah radiallahu 'anhu said, "In shi'ta an usammihim bani fulan wa bani fulan, fa'alt."
15:32"If you want me to start naming people, I will. I'll tell you exactly whose kids and what will happen here and what will happen there." That's in Bukhari. So the difference here is that Abu Hurayrah radiallahu 'anhu narrated over 5,000 hadith from the Prophet salallahu 'alayhi wa sallam.
15:45He knows things that we don't know. And clearly he recognized, he understood that the fitna was reaching a point that he did not want to be alive to be a part of that fitna. And Allah 'Azza wa Jall granted him that protection from that fitna.
15:57You also find a narration from Umar ibn Abd al-'Aziz rahimahullah ta'ala. But he made du'a. And this is what the 'ulama call a very specific type of du'a for death. Where he said, "Allahumma in kunta ta'lamu anni uridu bi-'amali hadha rida'aka
16:11wa salah ummati Muhammad salallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, faqbidni ilayk." Oh Allah, if you know that this work of mine that I have done was only seeking your pleasure
16:25and the rectification of the ummah of Muhammad salallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, then take me back to you. This du'a is when Umar ibn Abd al-'Aziz rahimahullah saw that the fitna was turning against him
16:38and it's kind of like he gave everything he had and now he's turning to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and saying, "Yeah, Allah, if you accepted it, then accept me back." This is the du'a that the 'ulama mentioned,
16:50which is the death of shawq ila Allah, longing for Allah. And they say, this is reserved for a very specific group of people. This is not a du'a that anyone makes, right?
17:03That he is conditioning the acceptance of his deeds with the acceptance of his soul. And he's seeing now that things are turning against him and that he's kind of maxed out.
17:16Like he reformed the ummah in just over two years entirely. I mean, he brought it to a place that would not be felt until 'Isa 'alayhi assalam liked that place. Like he saw it happen, right? So now it's like, "Yeah, Allah, I did what I did.
17:30Now I miss you. I wanna come back to you." And this is the narration from Sufyan al-Thawri rahimahullah, who said that never was death more beloved to the scholars and the righteous in any era than it is in this time
17:43out of fear of being corrupted in their religion. That's why it reached that point. So how do we reconcile all of this? What is the rule here when it comes to all of this? When we bring all of these narrations together
17:57where's the end of time and where we are right now? Number one, the 'ulama mentioned that the default is the Prophet salallahu 'alayhi wa sallam was asked, "Who is the best of people?" Qala salallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, "Man tala 'umruhu wa hasuna 'amaluhu,"
18:11"Whoever has a long life and does a lot of good deeds in that long life." and does a lot of good deeds in that long life. That's number one. That this is the rule. And he was asked, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, "Who is the worst of people?" And he said,
18:25"Man tala umruhu wa sa'a amaluhu," "The one who has a long life and a lot of bad deeds, a lot of sins." So the best life is a long life with a lot of good deeds. The worst life is a long life with a lot of sins. This is the rule.
18:39And the ulama mentioned here that if you look at the wishes of the dead, subhanallah, you have people over the graves that are wishing to die and all of the dead are wishing to come back to pray two rak'ahs. They want to be you.
18:53They're wishing for two rak'ahs. They're wishing for one more time to breathe tasbih. They're wishing for one more time to give a dollar in sadaqah. They're wishing for one more day on this earth. And you have people that are wishing to be there instead. Right?
19:07And so there's something wrong here with the calculus. And that is that the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, "La yatamanna ahadukumu al-mawt, Let not one of you wish for death.
19:20Wa la yad'u bihi min qabli an ya'tiyahu, And don't make du'a for it before it comes to you. And he says, "Innahu itha mata ahadukum inqata amaluhu, Because when one of you dies, your deeds cut off. Your deeds cut off.
19:34Wa innahu la yazidu al-mu'mina umruhu illa khayran." And this is the key here. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, the believer's life does not increase except that it increases in good as well.
19:48Okay? So basically, every extra day is a chance to do an extra good deed. Every extra day of trial is a chance to have sabr, is a chance to have patience,
20:00and to have Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala expiate your bad deeds and raise your rank as a result. And the only exception is to qualify your du'a and say, "Ya Allah,
20:14if there is a fitna, if there is a trial and a tribulation that is going to come, that you know that I will not survive." And the ulama say, subhanallah, look at the way that this connects to istikhara. Istikhara,
20:28a lot of people have trouble with istikhara when they make du'a istikhara. Like you're entrusting your life to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and you're saying, "Ya Allah, this choice, I only want it to happen if it's good for me. Not that I like it. If it's good for me, make it happen." So in the same way, you're entrusting Allah with your death.
20:42"Ya Allah, I only want to die if it's good for me. Not if it's getting tough, if it's good for me." And here's the key here. The ulama say that anything beyond the takhsis of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, because he was very specific.
20:56He said, "The only du'a you can make to ask for a hasty death is if you want fitna, if fitna is coming to the people." Anything beyond that is ta'di fi du'a, is aggression, transgression in du'a.
21:10Meaning it's not just not going to be accepted, it's sinful. And when you make a sinful du'a, Allah 'azza wa jall can respond to it in a way that's harmful. In a way that actually hurts you. So anything beyond that is ta'di fi du'a. And a person should not do it,
21:24is transgressing in their supplication with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So that's the first sign here as it relates to the end of times, that people want to die because of emptiness. So the people under the graves
21:38are saying one more chance and the people above the graves are saying not another day. Subhanallah. Like imagine if they could hear us talking about how much we want to be like them and they want to be like us. May Allah 'azza wa jall protect us.
21:52And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the way that the Prophet said, "Let every increase of my life be an increase in good. And death be a relief from every evil."
22:05 Allahumma ameen. Al-Fatihah. Al Fatiha.
