Why did my mother die?

Islam holds that every soul has an appointed time, a moment known in Arabic as *ajal*, which is fixed by God alone. This is not a peripheral idea in Islamic thought but something central to its understanding of existence. The Quran speaks directly and repeatedly of this appointed term, making clear that no soul can die before its time, nor be delayed beyond it. For the scholars and theologians of the classical tradition, this was not a cold, mechanical fact but something deeply reassuring: your mother's death was not arbitrary, not accidental, not a mistake. It was known, and it was held within a knowledge far greater than our own. That may feel difficult to sit with, especially when the loss is raw. But Islam is asking you to trust in a wisdom that operates beyond what any human being can fully see.

The concept of *qadar*, often translated as divine decree or predestination, is one of the six pillars of Islamic faith. It means that God has knowledge of all things before they occur, and that what happens in creation unfolds within that knowledge. Importantly, Muslim scholars have always been careful to distinguish this from fatalism. Human beings still act, still choose, still bear responsibility. But the moment of death belongs to God. Early theological schools, including the Ash'ari and Maturidi traditions that have shaped mainstream Sunni Islam for centuries, wrestled seriously with how divine decree and human experience coexist. Their conclusion was not that suffering is meaningless, but that meaning is not always visible to us from where we stand.

Islam also teaches that this world, *dunya*, is not the full story. The word itself carries a sense of something lowly or near, a temporary dwelling rather than the destination. Death in Islamic understanding is not an ending but a transition, a movement from one phase of existence to another. The Quran describes those who die in faith as returning to God, and the tradition speaks warmly of the state of those souls in what lies beyond. For a person grieving their mother, this is not meant to minimise the pain of absence. Islam is quite honest about grief. The Prophet Muhammad, according to well-known accounts in the hadith literature, wept at the death of his own son, and he said that the eyes weep and the heart grieves. Mourning is not a failure of faith. It is a human response to a real loss.

What Islam gently resists is the specific question of *why her, why now*, as if a satisfying explanation were owed to us. The Quran acknowledges that human beings will face loss, fear, and hardship, and frames these not as punishments but as part of the texture of a life lived in a world that is not yet paradise. The tradition draws a distinction between suffering that tests the believer and suffering that refines them, and in both cases something is happening that carries weight and meaning even when we cannot name it. Scholars from Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya in the medieval period to contemporary Muslim thinkers have written about how grief can deepen a person's relationship with God, not because pain is good in itself, but because it strips away the illusions we build around permanent safety and forces an honest reckoning with what we depend on.

There is also, in Islamic practice, a communal dimension to this question. The phrase *inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un*, drawn from the Quran and spoken at news of a death, translates roughly as "we belong to God and to Him we return." It is said by those who mourn, but also by those around them. It is a reminder offered within community, not a private conclusion reached alone. Islam does not expect you to resolve this question in your own mind and move on. It expects you to carry it, to pray, to seek company, to make supplication for your mother's soul, and to continue living with the understanding that love does not end where the body does. The relationship between a child and a parent persists in Islamic understanding through prayer, through charity given on their behalf, and through the continuation of anything good they left behind in the world.