The Seventeenth Letter

[The Addendum to the Twenty-Fifth Flash]

A Letter of Condolence

On the Death of a Child

And in His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.(17:44)

My Dear Brother of the hereafter, Hafız Halid Efendi!

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

And give good news to the patient, * Those who when afflicted with calamity say: To God do we belong and to Him is our return.(2:155-6)

My brother,  your  child’s  death  saddened  me,  but,  “the  command  is God’s,”(40:12)   being  resigned   to  the  divine   decree   and  submitting   to  divine determining are marks of Islam. May Almighty God grant you all patience, and may He make the deceased a helper and intercessor for you in the hereafter. I shall explain five points which are truly good news and offer real consolation for you, and for pious believers like you:

F i r s t  P o i n t : The meaning of the phrase, “immortal youths”(56:17; 76:19) in the All-Wise Qur’an is this: with this phrase, the verse indicates and gives the good news that the children of believers who die before reaching maturity will remain perpetually as eternal, lovable children in a form worthy of Paradise; that they will be an everlasting source of happiness in the embrace of their fathers and mothers who go to Paradise; and will ensure that their parents receive the sweetest of pleasures, the loving and carressing of children; and that all pleasurable things will be found in Paradise; that those who say that since Paradise is not the place for reproduction there will be no loving and carressing of children, are not correct; and that gaining millions of years of pure, painfree loving and caressing of eternal children instead of a brief ten years or so of loving them mixed with the sorrows of this world, is a source of great happiness for believers.