"Dying Means Meeting Allah, So Why Do We Fear Death and Martyrdom?"

http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD219309

Al-Rahma TV, January 2, 2009

Hazem Shuman: "Dying Means Meeting Allah, So Why Do We Fear Death and Martyrdom?"

Egyptian cleric Hazem Shuman: "Why do we hate death? We do not avoid or fear death. We avoid and fear only the Hellfire.

[...]

"Do you want to enter Paradise? Of course you do. We all do. You will never enter Paradise until you die. Do you love the Prophet Muhammad? You love him very much. Me too. You will never get to see him or embrace him until you die.

[...]

"The reason for the 1967 defeat, for the 1948 calamity, for the loss of all our lands, for the fall of Baghdad, for the occupation, for Darfur, for the problems in South Sudan, for the colonialism that lasted throughout the 20th century is our hatred of death. Sheikh Amin and I reached the TV station together, and without arranging this in advance, we decided to come here to fight the hatred of death. We must love death, just like the companions of the Prophets.

[...]

"Dying means meeting Allah, so why do we fear death and martyrdom? We watch the martyrs in Gaza... We are not saddened by their deaths, because they are martyrs. We are sad only about the humiliating way they were killed, and about the humiliating circumstances in which we live. We do not hate martyrdom." [...]

"The Man is Under Siege, Living in Distress... With His Wives and Children in Anxiety; All Of a Sudden... They Find Themselves in Paradise"