Plagues used to be frequent in the Arabian Peninsula some time ago. But, praise be to Allah, Allah has now bestowed many blessings upon us. We ask Allah not to make them a gradual enticement leading us to ruin.
They tell us that as many as eight funeral processions would be brought for the prayer. Our town was formerly a small village with scarcely anyone in it, but deaths became so numerous that, when plague entered a house, it would wipe out the entire family, leaving the house shut tight with no one inside. They said that the town’s judge, the righteous judge Salih ibn Uthman, may Allah have mercy on him, once saw eight funeral processions leaving the congregational mosque in a single day. At that time, people had no cars with which to carry the funerals, and this alarmed the people: eight funeral processions following one another! There is no doubt that this was frightening.
So he prohibited them from doing so and said, “No one is to bring a funeral procession to the congregational mosque except the people of its own neighborhood. As for the rest, each neighborhood should offer the funeral prayer over its deceased in its own mosque and then take him to the cemetery,” out of fear that people would be distressed. For each funeral procession might be from a different household, and the sight itself—or the calamity of one who had lost a relative—might lead to weeping and wailing. Thus, as part of his wisdom, may Allah have mercy on him, he prohibited any funeral procession from being brought to the congregational mosque except that of someone from its neighborhood.
In any case, epidemics have now subsided, praise be to Allah, and we ask Allah not to make this a gradual enticement leading us to ruin.
His statement, “And the woman seized by labor pains”: man is a relative pronoun; that is, the woman seized by labor pains—meaning, she has begun to experience the pains of childbirth. Labor pains are painful and difficult, because they result from the child’s moving from one state to another. For while the child is in the womb, its face is toward its mother’s back and its back is toward her abdomen. Then, when Allah wills