Abū Hurayra (may Allah be pleased with him) also reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “By Him in Whose hand is my soul, this world will not pass away until a man passes by a grave, rolls about upon it, and says, ‘If only I were in the place of the occupant of this grave!’ He will be driven to this not by religious concern, but only by affliction” (1).
People will wish for death when tribulations abound, conditions change, and the prescribed forms of the Sharia are altered. If this has not yet occurred, it will inevitably occur.
Ibn Mas'ūd (may Allah be pleased with him) said, “A time will come upon you when, if any one of you found death for sale, he would buy it. As it has been said:
This is a life in which no good remains—
Is there no death for sale, that I might buy it?” (2)
The hadith master al-'Irāqī (3) said, “This need not occur in every land, at every time, or among all people. Rather, it is enough that it occur to some people in some regions at certain times. Linking the wish to passing by a grave indicates the severity of the corrupt conditions that will then have befallen people, for a person may wish for death without calling its form to mind; but when