Death Is in the Hands of Allah

Then there is the whole issue of suicide. There are certain things which are within our ability, and there are certain things which are out of our ability. Life and death are not within our realm. We did not choose to come into this world, or that we should look like this or like that; not even our parents have much control over that. Likewise death. But the question that arises is this: it is thought that people do have control over their death, when they try to kill themselves. Most people who try to kill themselves, whether with a gun, or by throwing themselves over a bridge, or whatever it is, do die, for the most part.

That is simply because this world is an abode of means; and when the correct means are adopted, they have a result. So someone who is going to shoot himself in the head is most likely going to die. But there are people who shoot themselves in the head and do not die; it just misses the critical point. There are people who throw themselves off, and try to hang themselves, and they just do not die. They overdose themselves, and they do not die, because death is in the hands of Allah (swt). Everything is in the hands of Allah; but there are some things in which He has given some amount of will to the human being to do, and some things are just out of the human will. So a person who is killed by somebody else — although that other person is responsible — has died his own death, and that is exactly what was written for him.

Allah says: wa mā min dābbatin fī al-arḍi illā ʿalā Allāhi rizquhā. There is no four-legged creature — meaning there is no beast on the earth — except that Allah is responsible for its rizq, its provision. That verse in the Qur'an in itself proves it.

Their belief goes against the verse of the Qur'an which says, of when their time comes: inna ajala Allāhi idhā jāʾa lā yuʾakhkharu law kuntum taʿlamūn — that when the time that Allah has allotted comes, then it will not be delayed, if only you knew. There was no way that it was going to be anything else.

And killing is different from death. Killing is the action of the murderer; death is the action of the one who is dying. So the person who is the murderer is responsible for killing, and is accountable for that, and will be punished for that.