Obituary: M. Rahmatullah
by Muhammad Yaqub Khan
The Light (Pakistan), 24th January 1937 Issue (Vol. 16, No. 4, p. 1)
I never imagined it would be my painful duty to write the obituary note of the manager of this paper, M. Rahmatullah, who was yet in the prime of life. Such, however, happens to be the vanity of human life. Like a bubble floating on the river of time it may burst any moment and smash along with it all the fond castles we might have been building. Rightly does the Quran depict this life as an empty pastime, the Home of the Hereafter (دارالاخرۃ) being the real home of man. Every time a link snaps and a dear and near one is snatched away from us, we awaken to this grim fact. This life is but moonshine, we say to ourselves, and it is all so stupid to so lose and most often debase ourselves in the pursuit of a mere dream with never so much as a serious thought for the abiding and abundant life that is to come. The scales seem for the time being to fall off our eyes but as soon as the sod is turned on the departed friend, along with him is buried that true perspective of things and once more we go about the daily round of life blindfolded.
Rahmatullah was a young man of most amiable disposition, his face always greeting everybody with a cheerful smile. Alas, that face was so soon to wither away and reduce to skeleton at the blighting touch of tuberculosis of a very malicious type which doctors describe as galloping TB.
A pure cool breeze was blowing as we lowered him into his last resting place. Is that the outer indication of the sweet Heavenly breeze which the Prophet said keeps blowing into the grave of a pure soul? — it struck me. Amen, I said. May that be so and may Allah’s Rahmat envelop Rahmatullah! And may the Light of Islam which he disseminated, light his path in this new life on which he has embarked!
Muhammad Yaqub Khan