Brother of Death

The Messenger of Allah (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said: “Sleep is the brother of death, and the inhabitants of Paradise do not die.” [Mishkat]

Sleep is one of the requirements for a healthy mind and body. Everybody must have experienced this at one time or another that when they are enjoying themselves immensely the last thing they want to do is leave all the fun and go to sleep. Eventually though, even if they manage to stay up all night, they have to go to sleep. There is no such thing as endless fun on earth.

This is one of the beauties of Jannah that there is no tiredness, no night, and no sleep. We will be having so much fun that we won’t want to go to sleep ever and we won’t need to either. Hard for us to imagine, constrained as we are by our earthly experience and limitations!

When a Muslim sleeps with the intention of waking up refreshed to serve Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) then his/her sleep also counts as worship. Excess of sleep though means that time is wasted that could be better spent in earning higher ranks of Jannah.

Since sleep is a type of death, we should also make sure that our last words and thoughts before we go to bed are such that should we die in our sleep the last thing we did was seek Allah’s forgiveness, ask for His Jannah and seek refuge from the Fire.