 Thank you all so much for joining us today. This is a really, really important subject. And it's often a subject that's uncomfortable. And so we appreciate you all and taking the initiative and making time on a busy Saturday, you know, it's beautiful weather outside and you could be anywhere else. And so we appreciate you all taking the time to join us as an introduction. My name is Aman Ali. I'm a filmmaker based in New York City, talking to you all from my apartment in Manhattan. But I just want to thank the folks at the MCC for not only inviting myself and these folks to join this conversation, but to hold these important events like this. It's important to put together events that are for the community to address important subjects and especially during this pandemic. This is on the forefront of each and every one of our minds. And so may Allah reward each and every one of you for joining us and also for the folks at the MCC for putting this event together. And so as a background, like I said, my name is Aman. And I did a documentary called Two Gods. And it's about a black American Muslim casket maker in Newark, New Jersey, who takes two boys under his wing to use the lens of death to teach them about life. And so these boys in the film wash bodies, build coffins, and through the lens of death, he's teaching these kids that their own lives are worth living. So I'm just going to play. We sent a link to the film for you all to watch in advance. And so somebody all had a chance to watch it. But if not, totally all good. That link is available for you guys to watch throughout the weekend. But I'm going to play a quick clip up from the documentary. This aired on PBS nationwide a couple or a couple of weeks ago. But I'm just going to play a quick clip. And in this scene, you will see an eight-year-old boy participate in the Janaza process. So let me just cue that up real quick. Minir, can you see my screen? Yes, I can. Cool. I'm a little, uh, trainee here. I'm going to do that. How are you? How you doing? You put your thumbs in here like this and the other one. And then you put your gloves so that the water and everything is different. But she should take this water because she doesn't wash the water. You know? I need it. All you're doing is raising here. So you just thoroughly, you know, always your left hand in those areas. So I'm going to hold it out like this here. And I will watch. The second time I did the washing, it was a friend of mine. It was an honor opportunity being able to help the ones that got called home. And none of my time has come. And Rashad pretty much put me under his wing. What's important is you give them their right, which is wash them properly. And while you're taking pride into doing what you're doing, because they're no longer able to do it for themselves, you're receiving the benefit and the mercy from your creator, the benefit and the blessing that comes from it. Who doesn't need 40 major sins removed? Who doesn't need all your sins removed? What you learn today is you learn what happens to a Muslim after they die. And in case I was to get killed or I was to die of natural causes, what you're supposed to do to me? Wash my right side, wash my left side, clean me up, shroud me, right? Okay, great. So this is just a quick snippet from the film just to give you a flavor of if you haven't had a chance to watch. It's a really important scene as well. There's a lot to unpack. And we've been really fortunate with the response that our film has gotten not only from the press and the industry. New York Times rated it as a critics pick, although we won a couple of awards at film festivals. But aside from the superficial things, it's one of the reasons why we want to do an event like this is it brings out a lot of reflections in people based on your experiences, based on your upbringings. And death is a subject that very often we don't really think about, right? Many of us, we just we don't think about it until we have to actually like deal with it. And I know from experience, having lost my dad a couple of years ago, it's so overwhelming when you lose a loved one. And then all of a sudden, you have to start making important decisions about burials and wills and estates and navigating all of this. And we realized that, and I'm sure Brother Abdulrahman in his funeral work, who's going to be joining us later, can attest to this that it's so it's very important to have these conversations now to sit down with your loved ones and put together a will. Talk to your parents about important end of life care decisions while they're humbly happy and healthy and of sound mind because these situations are going to come up. And a lot of, you know, our time comes and a lot of calling will come for each and every one of us. And it's important to do these things now so that when these things happen and they will happen, it makes it easier to to to grieve peacefully without worrying about having to navigate all of these difficult subjects. And for us as filmmakers, my brother directed this film and I produced it. It was important to capture this subject as well because Islam speaks so beautifully about death and the process is so beautiful how the community really steps up to take care of a beloved sister or brother as they prepare for the next chapter of their journey. And so it was important for us to capture that. And this film really celebrate this beautiful tradition because many of us, maybe we prayed at a Janaza, but maybe we haven't seen the actual process until we've had to wash one of our loved ones. And so it was important for us to celebrate that in a very poetic and a beautiful way. And oh, and a question we often get is the name of the film Two Gods. Why is the name of this film called Two Gods? And it actually came from a conversation that we had with one of the funeral directors. And he said the problem that a lot of people have today is they try to worship Two Gods. And I said, well, what do you mean by that? I said, well, people are trying to worship Allah and the streets, the dunya at the same time. And very often we fixate so much on survival and trying to get by today that we're not thinking about tomorrow, not thinking about our future. And the central conflict of faith is people that try to worship Two Gods at the same time. Obviously, in Islam, we believe in one God. And so part of thinking about death is living our life with purpose. This doesn't have to be a morbid, a depressing subject. But when we start thinking about our time will come, it helps put our life in a much more purposeful way. And so I wanted to show you a quick, our brother, Hanif, who is the main subject of the film, he's an incredible, incredible man. He's a very busy person as well. And he's actually midst of doing a janaza right now. So he couldn't join us today, but he did record a quick message that I wanted to play for you all real quick. Let me just play that cue that up. One, go. I sound like I'm MCC. I wanted to say give you all my great thanks for watching, you know, the documentary of myself. I also want to say whatever that may have shown. I want to give back what I'm doing actually, sorry, is giving back to my experience in my life and the things that I had done in my life. So what I was trying to touch base is on and I'm praying that y'all really understood that, you know, what y'all seen then and then what y'all seen after the fact. And even at the end of it, I want to know that the impact, I want to say to y'all that the impact that I'm putting on is really for the future of my life because it's about me and the things that I have been through. So what I'm basically doing with sharing with the people, which is the community and also the young boys that I was mentoring that had to be a major part of my life. So I want to say thank y'all again for even paying attention to where I was at and where I'm at today. So where I'm at today is just moving forward and all the things that we look forward on doing and inshallah to Tyler, y'all also have a happy 20 years to see it again. Thank you to brother Hanif. And one thing that I just I can show you a quick anecdote about Hanif just to tell you just a testament to not only who he is, but people that work in the end of life care and even funeral space. Hanif literally every day sends me a text message in the morning every day at like seven, eight o'clock in the morning saying inshallah like I love you bro. Every single day. I've known this guy for, we filmed, I've known this guy for like six years now when we started filming with him. And it really just speaks to the testament of all the sisters and brothers that work in this space. They have the biggest hearts and it is such a blessing to have people like this in every community. And so it's important to take the time to thank those folks because they truly do the most it's thankless work. And it's important to recognize that that they really are important pillars of our community that really help families navigate through difficult times. And so we have a lot to go over to today. And again, we want to make sure that we answer a lot of your questions. And some of you all have sent us questions in advance and feel free to drop questions in the chat. But an important one that comes up and that's why we're really excited to have Dr. Rami Salah with us is end of life care conversations because I don't know about y'all if you're similar in my experience, I am a first generation Muslim American, my family was born overseas but regardless where you're from. But we are young professionals working and our parents that worked dedicated their whole lives to taking care of us, supporting us. In some ways gave up their hope syndrome so that we could chase ours. We're now in a position where we are starting to take on that responsibility of taking care of them. And that can be an honor and a blessing. And at the same time, that can be very stressful. And that can be overwhelming. We can very often feel like we don't know how to navigate these situations. And especially when we live in families that have siblings, that can be difficult as well. This is my role. I'm the oldest. I'm the youngest. This is what mom would want, what dad wouldn't want. This is a very, very difficult time. And it's important for us as family members to come together to talk about these situations. And what's great is folks like Dr. Rami are very well versed in these discussions. Dr. Rami Salah is a well-known doctor in Palo Alto that focuses on hospice and end of life care. And so he's going to talk a little bit about, just to give you a overall view of this very important subject. And we also want to take some time to answer a lot of your questions. So without further ado, I will toss it over to Brother Rami. Thank you first and foremost to Iman for putting together such a thoughtful and raw documentary that I had the chance to watch yesterday. I definitely encourage folks who haven't watched it to take the time to. And thanks for everyone joining. I actually like small intimate groups around this discussion because sometimes it does get lost when there are many people. So I'm hoping that it's more of a conversation. And today I'm going to talk a little bit about a lot of things and touch on things. It was hard to fit in how much I wanted to say in a short amount of time. So I hope it just kind of scratches the surface, maybe stirs something within you to start having these conversations, like Brother Iman said. It's interesting, end of life, even just the words end of life when I say them, although it makes sense kind of practically speaking, Islamically speaking or spiritually speaking, it doesn't fit our worldview and what we get from our own Dean in terms of where we came from and where the soul is going afterwards. So to start off, I wanted to just touch very briefly on death and dying in Islam and what we can learn from some of the prophetic hadith of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. I like to always start off these talks with a quote from Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Mallah preserve him and his essay, Death and Dying in the afterlife in the Holy Quran, which he says, without death, it is questionable whether we would have any need for religion at all. At a fundamental level, religion's greatest claim is making sense of the reality of death, which relentlessly impinges on our living consciousness. I mean, think for a second what your Dean would mean, what Islam would mean if there wasn't something called death waiting for us at the end of our lives. It wouldn't make sense. So it's important to recognize that death and dying is integral to our spirituality and our faith. Just two hadith that I wanted to bring up, Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was asked, who are the wisest? And he responded, اكثرهم للموت الذكراء, those who remember death most often, and who is the best in preparing for what's after it, those are the wisest. And he said, اكثر ذكراء هذما لذات, remember often the ender of pleasures. Like Aman said, people don't want to think about death. There was a French writer who wrote death is like the sun and can't be stared at steadily, right? You can't think about death all the time and we shy away from it. But it is a spiritual practice and one that's, you know, supported by the prophetic hadith to remember often death. Another one, and I put the picture of thorns there because we know that hadith that nothing pricks the skin of a Muslim or no harm befalls a Muslim except that their sins are forgiven, even if it's the prick of a thorn. And there was a story when a man who had died and another man who was in the company of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi said, oh, he was fortunate. He died and he wasn't tried by an illness. And Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi responded, say, woe to you. How would you know that if he was tried by an illness, some of his sins would have been forgiven? And it's important this idea of redemptive suffering is important in our Dean. Now, I always like to make it a point because I see this by Muslim patients when people are suffering at the end of life to use this as a sort of okay or permission to sign up for very harmful treatments at the end of life. And I, you know, as a palliative care doctor in this field, I'd say that a person is suffering enough from their disease, from their cancer, from their heart failure, from whatever it is, and causing undue suffering from treatments, whether it's life support, CPR, or chemotherapy, or whatever comes up at the end of life. There's a big difference between those things, right? In fact, avoiding harm is integral to Islamic bioethics. There shall be no infliction or reciprocation of harm, and that extends into medical ethics. So now, just for the remainder of the time, I'm going to walk you through a case built off a real case of a 70 year old Muslim man traveling from the Middle East. And right upon landing in the States, he was rushed to the emergency room, and was acutely ill, and it was found to have a large clot in his lungs. And after a few days go by, he was in the ICU, and he's needing maximum support short of life support, meaning intubation, and hooked up to a ventilator. I know this has become common speak with COVID now, so people know what I'm talking about. So palliative care, which is a specialty in medicine that deals with people with serious illness and communication and symptom management, they were consulted to help the conversation. Now, the sun comes by, flies out a few days into the course, and he's from Saudi Arabia, and a family meeting is held, and when the doctors or the staff brought up the idea of, okay, what's next to be done in terms of intubation, the sun exclaims, in my religion, we do everything. If we must intubate, then intubate. This is a scene that I've seen in my family, treating Muslim patients many times when we fall on religion and our understanding of our Dean to help dictate medical decisions. And Dr. Amit, can you explain what intubate means? Yeah, so intubate is a tube that doctors put down the windpipe to both force air in and out of the lungs. Many times it's brought up to say, help you breathe. It's not helping you breathe. It is literally breathing for you. So without a ventilator, people would die. So it's life support. It's often used interchangeably. So I wanted to reflect really quickly on medical decision making at the end of life for Muslims and some of the themes that I think in having these talks and seeing it in the hospital, what I come up with. Number one, there is a level of mistrust, much like any other racial or religious minority in the States founded on religious or racist discrimination and bigotry on the part of the healthcare system. That is a real thing that's there. There is a level of mistrust that Muslims and their families come to the healthcare system. Number two, I think I can say this since I'm a Muslim and I come from a Muslim family. We don't do well with emotions. We don't do well with grief. I think we are poor emotional processors for the most part if I can paint everyone with one giant brush. And I think there's work to do around grief and processing emotions. Number three is duties to Allah are amplified even if a person is not practicing for their life, the majority of their life. When they are confronted by death because there is a fundamental belief of the afterlife, the Akhirah and meeting Allah, duties to Allah are then amplified. What can I do? What is halal? What is haram? And in doing that, people turn to imams. And I got to say, I feel for imams. I feel for imams who are not only custodians of masjids, are not only overseeing weddings and nikahs and funeral processions and teaching deen and Quran and talking about kids and marriage counselors. And now you're going to pull them in to say, hey, withdrawal of life support, is that halal or haram? That's impossible to do as an imam, let alone just one clinician who's seen it. So I think it puts imams at an unfair predicament. And lastly, there is an over emphasis on fiqh, I'd say, and legal aspects of actions at the end of life. What is haram? What is halal? Although the movie was shot in black and white, it's not black and white when a person is dying, right? There's a lot of nuances. And I'd say that an ethical approach of not necessarily one what you can and can't do, but one of what you should and shouldn't do is a better lens to look at the medical decision making near the end of life. So going to the legalistic approach, I'm going to fly by this, there have been fiqh councils around the world and throughout time to help say, hey, withholding and withdrawing life support, when is it okay? And as you can see, you can read through some of these rulings. They're both vague and they're also, they rely on medical data or at least medical judgment. So these fiqh councils, I mean, who's going to dictate whether a person has no chance of survival or if treatments are futile, right? That goes to the clinician's judgment. And I want to paint for you a scene that maybe some of you have seen, maybe some of you have been part of. If you look at three parties at end of life, when if someone is on life support, the doctor, the patient, and an imam who's pulled in, well, the doctor, because the way we practice here in America, autonomy is the most important. They're going to look to the patient, hey, what do you want? The patient, now my duties are to God, I got to get some religious guidance on this, is going to turn to the imam. And as you saw from the different fiqh councils, they're doing it right, they'd go back and turn to the doctors to say, you know, what is futile, what is, you know, appropriate, what's not. To make pictures worse, the picture worse, usually a family member. And it's not usually the family member who's been in it with the patient through all their chemotherapy sessions or all their doctor's appointments. It's usually the family member from out of state who flies in, who knows somebody who knows somebody who had the same disease and lived 10 years later because of the doctor they saw. And they bring in this idea, which really just obscures the picture and the plan. And then from the hospital standpoint, because the hospital has its own incentives, sometimes they have to bring committees like ethics committees to weigh on a case. This is chaos. This is not how people should die, right? Because all the meanwhile, while these conversations are happening and these conflicts are arising, and these arguments are taking place, the patient is suffering. And, you know, that to me is the greatest, you know, failure of all this. So bringing it back to the case, and I promise I'm going to end really quickly, there was at least one fatwa from Saudi Arabia in the 80s about DNR orders, do not attempt to resuscitate order. If someone dies, don't do compressions, just allow a natural death. And what they ruled is that a patient is unfit for resuscitation if three doctors, trustworthy doctors in the words of the fatwa, say that the disease is unresponsive and death is certain, or there's some, you know, mental inactivity and untreatable brain damage, or resuscitation would be ineffective. And in fact, in this fatwa, it goes on to say that the doctors don't have to turn to the family regarding this because they are unqualified to make these decisions. A very paternalistic, I'd say, approach, not passing judgment on one way or another. So I actually am there with the sun, and I bring up this fatwa because, hey, I'm well versed and I read up on this and let me put that hat on to see if I can, you know, break through a barrier. But he looks to me and exclaims, look, I'm the doctor of the family, and I don't want to be seen as the one who decided our mom should die. Immediately, it threw me in for a loop because I approached it. All wrong. Here is a human being. Forget that he's Muslim for a second. Forget that he's a doctor for a second. Forget that he's a son of a woman who's dying for a second. He's a human being with emotions. And in fact, he needed help processing those emotions before getting to the actual medical decision. So I just wanted to introduce advanced care planning just as a concept. This is better read backwards. Planning for your care in advance. So having these conversations, putting pen to paper in advance with your family members is important to do now. There's a proverb. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now. So making sure that you have these discussions with your families is so important to help guide those. I'm going to skip through that to help guide through these discussions. I just want to focus on quality of life, which actually doesn't have a good translation into Arabic. My mentor and friend, Dr. Kamala Bushamsia actually says the closest is the living with dignity and how we define dignity for ourselves. So questions to ask yourself when having these questions. What brings you joy? What gives my life purpose or meaning? What what would matter to me at the end of life the most? Or where would I like to be if I had the choice to be where I when I would die? And in hearing the answers, many Muslims would would respond with communicating with loved ones is something very important for people. Being pain free as much as possible, not suffering, physical suffering. Having the mental awareness to not only communicate with loved ones, but to worship Allah, having taklif, right? Accountability in front of Allah and worshiping him. And of course one that comes up, especially from mothers all the time is not to be a burden for loved ones. They can't find that quality of life acceptable for them. And I think centering medical decisions around not the medical data, not the CAT scans, not the lab values, but in fact a person's values how they define quality of life for themselves or dignity for themselves. I think that should be front and center. So this is an advanced directive I put on a website. If you want to take a picture of this slide, I think it's the one action item that I would say everyone should do. Everybody over the age of 18 should have an advanced directive regardless of health status, prognosis, whatever it is. So fill this out. Name a surrogate decision maker, someone who knows you well enough to make decisions on your behalf and write down your preferences. And I think that's pretty much it for my presentation. I'm happy to take questions. Thank you for that Dr. Rami. That is such so many important things you talked about there, especially because this understandably so is an incredibly emotional moment in our lives. And nothing honestly can truly, truly prepare you for these things until they happen. And yeah, it is important to sit down and talk about those things. And before my dad passed, that is something that we did. We sat down with him and we said, okay, if you're in a situation where you're on a ventilator, what do you want us to do? And he told us exactly. He said, if there is no hope, then if it's going to be to have an adverse impact on me, then yes, I want you all to do not resuscitate. And that way there wasn't any vague interpretation. This is what dad would have wanted. Are you trying to kill dad? What are you trying to do this and that? I've had friends where they're forced to make that interpretation because they didn't have that conversation. And that five minute conversation months before my dad passed, Hamla made things so much easier. So yeah, definitely recommend going to that site. And it's something that a family member may have a decision now, but maybe a few months later, they decide to change their mind or maybe when they become sick, they say, actually don't or do something different. And that's okay. It's important though, to start those conversations and think about those things. I can't stress enough how it's awkward, it's uncomfortable, it's never a good time. But I promise you, when you sit down and have that conversation, it brings your family closer together. And it makes things so much more bearable. And again, it's hard to navigate, especially with siblings, people dispute. It's super important. And so we got a couple of questions that Dr. Amida did come in in a situation where, and I know, as you pointed out, these are not black and white issues. These are so nuanced from the song perspective. But oftentimes there's a situation where somebody is on a ventilator and from a medical perspective, a doctor will say, there's, the machine is breathing for them. And there's really no, from a doctor's perspective, there is no hope that they're going to be able to make it on their own. From your perspective and from your research, what advice would you give to a family to approach that situation? Yeah, it comes up often. If those discussions weren't had ahead of time, I would say a couple of things. Number one is it is important to take clinical judgment from those who know situations like that very seriously, right? To listen to the doctors, to listen. I mean, I'm just saying here, the doctor's recommendations. Secondly, put your parents, friend, brother, sister, whoever it is, front and center, right? What would be acceptable to him or her, right? And then lastly, I always, I think the frame of mind that we approach this question is, even when you said I'm on no hope, for example, or people say the words withdrawal of care, right? Or, oh, there's nothing more we can do. No, there's always something we do. There is a million in one ways we care for patients. That includes sometimes removing harm from a patient. So if you feel that you're causing more harm than benefit, right? Then I'd say it is acceptable to remove that harm. In fact, from an Islamic bioethical standpoint, there is a maxim. Dar'u al-Mathasid, awla min jalbil masalih, which translates to removal of harm actually takes precedence over provision of good. And so taking that, as well from a fiqh perspective, seeking medical treatments when it is uncertain whether these medical treatments would work, is not obligatory. It's not mandated from a fiqh standpoint. Then there is room to have those discussions and remove harm and allow people to pass naturally. If that's something that fits within their goals of care. So yeah, it's a very loaded question, but I hope that some of those things help guide the conversations. Yeah, and we will, after this, we're going to be recording this event. So we'll send you all recording from it and also some additional resources, some talking points on how to start these conversations. Because again, these are super, super important subjects, and we all are going to deal with them in different degrees if you all haven't dealt them already. It's important to talk about these things now. A question came up is, and I know it's a field that you're very familiar with is the last few years of a person's life. Let's say there's a situation where a parent has been diagnosed with dementia and they need to get additional care. And culturally, for many families, the our parents are supposed to live with us when they get older. But we may not have the home and the resources to really give our parents the care that they need. Can you talk a little bit about within the Bay Area community, if there's organizations or nursing centers or even other places that people can go to to get additional care? Oh, there's such a paucity of caregiver resources. And in fact, you touched on this, Amon. I mean, I think our generation, if you're in your 30s and 40s, and as our parents get older, I think there's going to be a crisis nationwide in terms of caregiving. We're not equipped for it because people are living much longer with chronic illness than ever before. And the the burdens of caregiving sometimes are just insurmountable because the family structures have changed, I mean, compared to where they are traditionally or how they are overseas. And in fact, in our home countries, where our parents came from, that's changing there too. So yes, homes, assisted livings come up, you know, and sometimes there's a lot of emotion on that in terms of looking for placement. And then caregiving, hiring caregivers, tends to be something that that people have to at least discuss. And it's especially in the Bay Area, expensive. It is very, very, very expensive. So planning around that is important. Now, I'm from, you know, from a here and now perspective. Yeah, so I don't know of any resources in specific, I would say many doctors' offices have social workers who know the lay of the land depending on what geography you're in. So getting in touch with social workers, if that's something you're thinking about, it's always good to get started now. Yeah, a lot of great questions coming in. This question I like, but it's an important one. How can Muslims in the US unite to build a Muslim hospital? We don't need more Muslims. I'm sure something you've thought about as well, working in the field that yes, it's beautiful. We have Jewish hospitals and Catholic hospitals, Presbyterian, Lutheran hospitals. And I know there are, there have been a lot of Muslim non-profit health clinics. Are you aware of any particular broader initiatives to build nursing centers and even just hospitals along those lines? I wish. There was one in Australia, a nursing home from Muslims that was built in Australia, which looked amazing. And I wish we had something similar here. And unfortunately, we're so late to the game that regulations around building clinics or hospitals have been more than they've ever been before, for a reason, if you ask me. But also it serves as a lot of barriers. So I don't know of any efforts. And I've actually been asked this question more than once because it is something that we should take seriously as a community. I just don't know. There's a question that came in and this is definitely deserves a session in and of itself is how to cope with the loss of a loved one. And this is not a black and white issue by any means. And I will share from my own experience and from my own observations and talking to people and I always tell people it's okay to not be okay. And it's important when you lose a loved one to give yourself the space to grieve. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be depressed. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he mourned the loss of one of his wives and his companions, he took the time and he was depressed. He was sad for a long for many, many months. And that's okay. It's okay to feel angry. It's okay to feel numb. It's okay to feel confused. It's just important to give yourself the space to sit with your emotions. And when you grieve, those people are going to tell you, Oh, you need to do this. Everybody has their own journey. Everybody has their own process. And so it's important to give yourself that space. There's no magical thing that I can tell you that Dr. Rami can tell you that anybody can tell you that helps a wand and makes things goes away. We each have our own journey. My father passed away three years ago at this point and it is still difficult. And there's moments, there's little things that remind you of things. And that's okay. And that is a part of life and that is a part of each and every one of our journeys. And so it's not easy. It's not difficult. And it's important to embrace that. And I'm sure Dr. Rami, you've had to deal with that as a doctor in dealing with patients that are grieving. I don't know if there's anything that you had to share on the subject here. I think everything that you said, I mean, especially looking at the seerah of how the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam mourned, how his companions mourned his death like, he was angry, he was in denial, you know, all the different emotions around grief and grieving. So it is okay to feel those emotions. If the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and who he is, if Ahmad in his conviction and strength had those emotions, who are we not to? So I would echo the things that you said. One valuable resource that I think as people are near the end of lives or their lives are afterwards is Muslim chaplains, which I think are becoming fully, you know, more and more in number as time goes on. I think it's a field that we need more of to help with these sort of emotions, to help, you know, spiritual distress for people who are feeling it when they're met with illness or with death. So if your institution or if you know of people who are in the Muslim chaplaincy world, definitely reach out to. Yeah. And somebody brought up a question in the chat. My sister passed away last May and I feel like my grief is affecting my family. And again, each and every one of us has a journey when and I can assist her. Thank you for the question. And I can share from my experience, I have four brothers and we all dealt with the loss of our dad in different ways. It was important for us to give each other the space to grieve how we choose it, right? If somebody feels completely withdrawn from the family and doesn't want to hang out or talk or this or that, it's important to give them that space. Obviously, it's important to, you know, be proactive and try to do things. I can't recommend enough as someone that has benefited just from therapy in general, not just because of this. I see a therapist regularly. That works for me. Other people, it's writing, it's exercising, it's poetry, it's watching something and talking about it. And everybody has their own process. And in a family, we're all going to grieve differently and we shouldn't. It's a well intended thing. Oh, is this, am I bringing other people down by bringing up somebody dying? I don't want to be a downer. I don't want to feel like a burden when I keep bringing this up. Each and every one of us has a journey. And it's important that in our families, we give each other the space to do that. My mom, understandably so, takes it very hard and that's okay. We all love her. We give her care. We show her support. It's just important to realize that our relationships with loved ones is very different across the family. Maybe somebody looked at, sister, maybe somebody had this relationship with your sister. So they're taking it differently. And maybe you have a relationship that's different and your parents have a different relationship. And so it's important for each and every one of us to honor that. And so if somebody is grieving, our response would be, okay, how can I best support that person to give them love, to give them support and at times give them space when they need that. And so we shouldn't feel bad if we feel like our grief is coming off as a burden. A question that just came up. If an elderly person who is in a wheelchair bound is losing weight because they don't want to eat, what is the Islamic perspective on putting that person on a G tube for feeding? Another question that has multiple interpretations and it really depends who you ask, to be honest. And it really depends, I think, from a medical standpoint, what this elderly person has in terms of disease or a diagnosis. We know, for example, from a medical standpoint, for people with advanced dementia, that not eating is the natural progression of the disease. People lose their ability to walk, they lose their ability to talk, and then they lose their ability to eat. And in fact, when they've done studies to see if G tube either improve mortality, meaning survival, lengthens their lives, or at least from the caregivers and what they can perceive as improving the quality of life, it had no intended benefits. It doesn't mean starve the person. If you want to hand feed and have that at least attempt, you should keep their mouth moist because dry mouth is terrible. You should. And at the same time, you should not feel pushed or it's not an imperative to pursue, you know, medical artificial nutrition and hydration. I actually don't even like calling it tube feeds, because there's so much more around feeding than nutrition, right? Food is love, food is culture, food is being apparent, food is nurturing, food is holidays, all of this. And then we talk about it in a medical standpoint, and it just, you can't, right? You can't marry those two approaches. So I would say that it really depends on who you ask, and it really depends on the clinical status, but there is room to not pursue a G tube, both from a medical and I think an ethical standpoint. And keep the questions coming. There's some questions in the chat and the folks on Facebook, we see some of your questions as well, and we'll definitely get to those. A question that came up. Are there Muslim chaplains for counseling? In general, I don't know if there's, not to put it in the spot, do you know any good resources that people can reach out to in the Bay Area that may not necessarily have to be Muslim, but just at least well versed in dealing with people of color issues or people of Islamic backgrounds? I think, yes, there are. In fact, we have a chat, Muslim chaplain on the call today. Ziata is a group that I'm a part of, made up mostly of Muslim chaplains who have some resources. I encourage you to check out the website. It's Z-I-Y-A-R-A.org, I think. So, there is a group of Muslim chaplains, absolutely. Now, I would say that chaplains and counselors are different in their roles, right? Chaplains have a specific role in terms of spiritual distress, spiritual care, and I think it's an underutilized service or resource, but check that out. Great. Yeah, and I can't stress enough the importance of therapy. I know I'm on in my soapbox right now, but it's a part of everyday care, like the way I go to a dentist to get my teeth checked out. Why wouldn't I want to do the same for my heart? Am I going to give better care to my teeth than my heart? If my computer, my laptop is broken, I take it to the Mac store, the Apple store to get it looked at. Like, why is my laptop getting better care than my heart and my soul? And it doesn't mean that you're crazy or dealing with this or diagnosed this and that. It's just proactive mental wellness. It's just a part of how it's an extension of that. And I understand there's cultural stigma and all that, but it's nonsense. And it's important to proactively do this. It's not just react while I'm dealing with this. So, I have to deal with that or I'm good. My life is fine. It's a proactive thing the same way I get checkups twice a year and I go to the dentist every six months. I see a therapist every week. I have stuff that comes up and especially during this pandemic. In this pandemic, a lot of us don't realize that in different ways we're all dealing with grief because our lives that we lived before the pandemic are fundamentally different right now. And so, we're grieving our old lives and death is around us. And there's so much happening, not only with the pandemic, but just social unrest, the world, war, the economy, this and that. That's a lot for each and every one of us to take in. And sometimes I don't think we realize like just the level of trauma that each and every one of us is dealing with. And I'm sure especially as parents, it can be super difficult to raise children during this. A question that just came up and we'll take this question and then we will keep the questions going, but I do definitely do want to get to brother up there for my next. But what does Islam say on the use of morphine? Working in hospice, I see families including Muslim families have so much fear about using it. Can you talk a little bit about that and other medications in general? Thank you for bringing that up. That is something that comes up a lot. Not just from Muslim patients and families, but even Muslim doctors who have some kind of discomfort around providing morphine at the end of life. Morphine and opioids like it definitely help with suffering at the end of life. It does. Now, theoretically, a lot of the discomfort comes from the idea of it hastening death. There's a theoretical thing that morphine depresses our respiratory drive and therefore can hasten death. Ethically speaking, the intention of Qasit or intention is one that's very important so that if your intention is to relieve suffering and if an unintended seemingly bad consequence were to happen from that, then it is still permissible and good, in my opinion, to relieve that suffering. Again, no harm should be inflicted or reciprocated in Islam. I'd say that it's not a blanket statement. I actually ask my patients and I prescribe opioids a lot in the field that I'm for people near the end of their lives. I say, listen, some people would rather because some of the side effects of opioids are sleepiness and drowsiness and sometimes confusion. Some people are okay with that as long as their pain is controlled. Other people would rather deal with pain if it gives them more moments of lucidity and being awake. Where are you in that spectrum? Therefore, a person can say their personal preference of I would rather deal with pain and be awake or no, this pain is unbearable, treated with everything you have regardless of the side effects. There is definitely room to treat symptoms near the end of life for people who are dying. On a related note, I'm sure you deal with this a lot as well. There's a lot of well-intended cultural practices when it comes to medicine saying, oh, no, just eat, drink some Zum Zum and take this black seed. You don't need all this treatment and medications. Again, there is benefits to holistic, all-natural remedies and treatment, not only from a scientific perspective, but a medical perspective. But I'm sure very often times in the hospital, you may deal with families that are really insistent on certain things. What is a healthy way to navigate that? Because it comes from a loving place. It comes from a very well-intended place, but what is the best way to diffuse some of those situations? Explore it. Explore. Take the time. Be curious. I say this to doctors usually who, if you hear something about holistic medicine and you're just like, they roll their eyes. No, sit down. Explore. Be curious. Learn about the experiences that made a person want to look for holistic or non-Western pharmacologic treatments. I think there's room for that, to be honest with you. See what the patient is trying to accomplish or trying to avoid in either not signing up for more traditional medicines or going with the unconventional medicines. Explore and be curious. Great. Keep the questions coming. We're going to go ahead and keep things moving, but we will actually real quick, somebody asked, can you repeat the Saudi fatwa on end of life? Oh, I think I responded to it, but I responded to the panelists. I'll just repeat it verbally. A patient is unfit for resuscitation. If three competent and trustworthy doctors say that the person's disease is unresponsive to treatment and death is certain, there's a state of mental inactivity or untreatable brain damage or resuscitation would be ineffective. Those are the three points. You don't have to check all of them, just one or the other, according to the fatwa. Great. Jazakal Khair Dr. Amin. Again, keep the questions coming. If we have more time at the end, we'll definitely bring back Brother Amin to answer some more questions, but I definitely wanted to be mindful of time. Again, it's important to, like I said before, when it comes to death, very often we don't deal with it until it happens. In case and point, we often don't know about any of the Genaza, the funeral services in our community until we lose someone and then we're Googling, like Muslim funeral homes, Bay Area, or something like that. And so it's important that we recognize all the extensive resources that are available in the community. And Brother Abdul Rahman truly, truly, truly does thankless work alongside many other funeral directors in the Bay Area community. And it's important to really get a sense of what this process entails, what is it like, how much money do things cost, what should you expect, because I can't tell you enough. When you're grieving, the last thing you want to think about is filling out paperwork. And again, put together a will, pre-plan, set aside savings in advance so that this can be taken care of. You don't have to worry about what these costs are. In our family, we actually reserve burial plots just to get that done and over with for our mother, just to make things so much easier. Because I know Brother Abdul Rahman has a lot of thoughts about this as well. But I'm going to go ahead and toss it over to Brother Abdul Rahman to talk a little bit about the Genaza process. And in the state of California, what to expect because this is going to happen to each and every one of us. And it's important that we at least get exposed to this so that we're not learning about this for the first time when we're just so overwhelmed with grief. And so without further ado, I'll toss it over to Brother Abdul Rahman. JazakAllah. How are you? Brother Aman and Dr. Rami. So my name is Abdul Rahman. And I have with me, I don't know if you can see. Tamim. Tamim is half his year. We both are, so we are not funeral director. We are here in Bay Area. And our local masajid here takes care of the goosal basically and work with the funeral director to get the paperwork. And so we've been doing this goosal and also work with the family to get their paperwork, to speed up their paperwork. So we've been doing this for the last more than 10 years myself. And same with Brother Tamim here. So basically we are volunteers. We started off 12 years or 14 years ago, one of my friends passed away. So I was there doing my first goosal then. And then there was a need in the community for giving goosal. And so I started doing that. And Tamim also joined me 10 years ago. So we've been doing that since then. So there are a lot of things that go after death, like Brother Aman mentioned. And so I'm going to basically go over after the fact when a person passes away, we get a call. So our masajid here, there is one masajid here in Bay Area. That's where I'm from Fremont. There are over 60,000 to 75,000 deaths that we see in a year. And there are all the men, women, stillbirths, and young adults, all kinds, gunshot wounds, and all kinds of unnatural deaths all come here into our masajid. Can you say 60 to 70,000 deaths? Yes. Okay. Just want to check. So 60 to 70,000 deaths. So but in the Bay Area, where California Bay Area, we have three masajids that offer goosal and work with the funeral director. We have a facility in the masajid, which I will show in a bit, that we do goosal here and work with the funeral director. So what I plan to do in the next 20 or 30 minutes or 10 minutes is to go over the slides. Let me share my slide. Actually, before you get to that, a question just came in. What are the names of the three masajids that you just referenced? So the Lauri Masajid is the one that we are associated with. There is, it's called Islamic Society of East Bay, Islamic Society of East Bay, which is in Fremont. The other one is in MCA, which is in Santa Clara. And also we have one in Oakland, and there are other places as well in Stockton, as well as in Sacramento. So here, we see around 60 to 75,000 a year basically. And sometimes in a week, there are four or five. And for men, so the men team takes care of the men. And then we have a women team that takes care of the women goosal. So we have three marks. So let me share my screen. So what I'm going to go through is basically what it takes to do the paperwork, the cost, and also we can jump into the practical aspect of goosal and goosal. So let me do that here. So it's called Lauri Masajid or Islamic Society of East Bay. So basically I'm going to go over these, the basic process that involves the do's and don'ts. Many people, these are key to note and then we can jump into the goosal and shrouding, shrouding inshallah. Basically shrouding involves involves the kafir. So basically what kind of, we see, so the kinds of death, basically we have natural deaths where the people generally, they pass away naturally due to, you know, their long life or old age, or some could be due to illness. And they've been in hospital for a long time. So they all fall under natural death where you need a death certificate eventually. Then you have stillbirths where you lose a baby before or during delivery. And there are two categories under them. One is less than 20 weeks. And then you have the 20 weeks and above. So the one under less than 20 weeks, you don't need a paperwork, basically. For anything about 20 weeks, you know, stillbirth early, later or term, you will need a paperwork. And then you have unnatural death, you know, due to accident, gunshot wounds and all that. So all, so these are the three kinds. And to bury an individual, you would need a burial permit. And to get a burial permit, the funeral director would reach out to the doctor and the doctor is the one who is supposed to state the cause of death. Merely stating, you know, heart attack is not going to give a burial permit. It needs to be an underlying condition that resulted in a heart attack. So these are the three kinds of deaths that we see. And the one under less than 20 weeks, you don't need a paperwork. And sometimes in the hospitals, you know, the Christians or anyone, they send it to an incinerator, they just, you know, they just, you know, burn them off. But as Muslims, we can ask the hospital to give, you know, give the, in due to miscarriage, the, you know, stuff to the family and they can bury them in their backyard. And this is all, again, these are all what is, you know, these are all what happens here in California and it can vary from state to state. So And real quick, so to get a death certificate, that's usually something that the hospital or the funeral home provides, right? Yeah, it comes from the county. So basically, on the day of the death, you get a burial permit two weeks after the death certificate will be made. So that's what happens. So, so the key things here, do's and don'ts, don'ts, this couple of things that are listed here, and it's very critical to know unnatural deaths, you know, as soon as I mean unnatural deaths could be car accidents, you know, or gunshot wounds, any kind of an unnatural death, it could also be at home, you know, a person is suffering from high blood pressure for a long many years, and then one night, they pass away. So the first thing that you're supposed to do is call 911. And, and as soon as the police arrives, the first thing they're going to do is they're going to send the disease to the coroners. And this is where we need to be careful. If you know that a person has been suffering, you know, high blood pressure for a very long time, you want to immediately reach out to a doctor and get him involved right away and make sure that the police doesn't send the, send the disease to the coroner's office, you know, so those are the things which you have to keep an eye on. Or if a person is suffering for a long time, you need to make sure that your medical records are updated all the time, you are in touch with the doctors all the time. So in case of any unnatural death, you are there to call your doctor and prevent that individual being taken to the coroner's because as soon as it goes to a coroner, they're going to do an autopsy and that's what you don't want to do. So we have to be very careful when in case of any unnatural deaths, you don't want the disease to be sent to the coroner's. So that's very important and get the the medical records updated. You want to see the doctor often, you don't want to, you know, because what happens is when a person passes away and if you call a doctor, the doctor is saying, doctor is going to say that I don't know, you have never reached me, you've never visited me for such a long time, I will not be in a position to give a cause of death. So when none of the doctors will be available to give a cause of death and that's where the coroner's come in place. The coroner is going to do an autopsy and find the cause of death. The reason is why they have to do an autopsy is it could be a drug, it could be a death due to drug or it could be for any unnatural reasons. So the coroner is going to do an autopsy, he's going to cut open the chest and the head and sometimes they lose parts and sometimes coroner's offices are flooded with dead bodies and they stack more than one in a morgue, sometimes three or four are stacked in the coroner's morgue and you don't want Muslim brothers or sisters to go through that. So the first thing is that I generally tell or advise people here is to visit doctors often, keep your medical records updated and be in touch with the doctor so that when you, at time of death, you can reach out to the doctor and the doctor is there to tell, I can, I'm ready to sign the cause of death. It's only when the doctor is ready, you are able to get the burial permit and it's only with the burial permit you are able to bury the disease. So it's very important to get the medical records updated. If the parents are alone, I suggest not to leave them alone. I have seen parents who have passed three days ago just because no one is there to take care, he passed away alone in his home and it's three days later a son or a daughter comes in to find out that he's already passed away. So never to leave parents alone and like brother Rami mentioned, even in Baria we don't have any elderly homes or any care facilities where elderly can be taken care. So if you have an elderly parents, it's safe to keep them with you and never to leave them alone and then students. On that note, yeah, especially making your house or whatever house your parents are staying in slip proof. So like having rubber mats on the floor, railings, easy to get around, like that's super, super, super important because floors can get wet, it's very easy to slip and yeah, it's always important to make sure that those safety things are implemented as well. True and then in Baria we see a lot of students, overdrivers, they are on job working 24 hours, night shifts, day shifts and they go through accidents and they get some heart attacks and what happens if you don't have any information with you, they are going to send it out to any other Christian churches or any contacts that these hospitals or coroners that they have them, they send these Muslims there to cremate them. So students and overdrivers, many of them, the key thing is keep someone informed where you're going, what you have, have something written down, have it in your wallet that way they can reach your friends and family and then a proper Muslim burial can happen. And then the last one, the important thing is request comes all the time. I want to transport them to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh or a different state just because there are other dear ones are buried there. The one key thing that's important here is embalming. So when you ship or transport any deceased, embalming is required. Embalming is basically, it's a process where they take out all the fluids from your body and put in formaldehyde, fill it up with formaldehyde, which prevents the decaying of the deceased. And also these formaldehydes are very cancerous, water soluble. So you don't want that to happen. You don't want your body to go through all those kind of embalming process which is against even our scholars here, Ulama, they keep telling you don't need to transport anything, just bury them in the place of death. You don't have to ship them to any other place or any other state. So these are key things that I wanted to bring to the attention are the ones to remember, do's and don'ts. The next one I have here is the basic process here. So as soon as the funeral home or me gets an information about the deceased person, we get all the information. The funeral home is going to send a transportation to either a coroner's home or a hospital to pick the deceased and bring them to the masjid. And while the deceased is in the masjid, you know, the funeral home is going to contact your doctor. So it's very important to have the doctor in the loop because and to also let him know that he's going to get a call from the funeral home. You know, if you don't have your doctor ready, you know, the Janaza, the goosal cannot happen the same day. It'll have to be postponed. You have to put the deceased in the morgue for a couple of days. So you want to make sure the doctor is always on the picture and he's notified. And this way, the Janaza can, the goosal can happen and the Janaza can happen on the same day. So here in Berya, we make it a point, if it comes at eight in the morning, night, we do it on the same day till one. So it's very key to have the doctor in loop. If doctor is on surgery, on vacation, now you are not able to get the burial permit and we can't do goosal and the disease can be buried. So it's very critical that the doctor is informed and he should be aware to pick the call from the funeral home because the key thing is the cost of death. So it's without a cost of death from the doctor certifying the county or the state cannot issue a burial permit. So it's very important. I was just curious and I'm not as familiar, but maybe if you know or even by the money or if you know, are there resources in the community? Because these are big costs and are reasonable but they can be cost. Are there resources that for people can turn to if they can't afford these costs? Does the community have resource to help people? Yeah, all over the websites. So all over the websites have a link. So I can share the link from our website here in the Bay Area. So as soon as you hear anyone deceased, you go to our website, funeral service and you have contact numbers. So we are here, three of us, the Imam, myself, always there 24 by 7 to pick up the calls and we want to make sure that the goosal happens and the janaza happens at the very same time on the same day and he gets buried. And also we do get calls that someone is sick there on the last stage. What should we do? And those are the times we quickly go visit them and we tell them this is what is needed, especially when they are in hospitals, you have all these tubes that are put into your body. We tell them to make sure the nurses there are there to take those out before or after their demise basically. So those kind of pointers we let them know. We also have the paperwork, the details for filling up those forms available on the website and also we have mobile apps where you can fill in those information and this all happens within four hours. As soon as a person calls me and tells me there is a deceased person, it takes two hours to transport them to the masjid and if you know ahead of time we tell them make sure the doctor is aware of this if you want to expedite the burial. Yeah, it's great that there are resources out there to help people and I will say especially as people that if we do have a place of privilege is to really set aside these costs in advance as we're putting together wills, set aside money like this. So if a funeral is going to cost roughly around $6, $7, $8,000 is set that money aside maybe it's $100 every year or this and that like if you buy sneakers that cost this much like we should be setting this money aside because let's not worry about our kids and our future loved ones to take care of that. Set that money aside now, create an account, move that aside and so that that is taken care of because it's great that there are resources out there for families that can't afford these during very turbulent times but we also don't want to strain those resources as well. We want to make sure those resources are for emergency purposes for people that truly truly truly are in dire space so if we can lessen that burden on these resources let's set that money aside and so that's something that I can't stress enough as well. Yeah and let me just say this is Muneer that whenever there is someone we call it the Muslim Fund so the San Ramon Mosque and the MCC in Pleasanton we both have a joint fund where we cover the cost and we have a financial kind of a foreign application and we ask for cost sharing from the family because it is a limited fund and we usually do four or five a month of folks that cannot be buried by and and then MCA has a fund as well so we between the three organizations were able to cover pretty well but it is a limited fund so it's important for folks to have some savings and we do ask that as well if you could contribute anything towards the cost so we don't we're not covered the complete burden of the cost using community funds. Yeah and we're not here to to do a fundraiser today but yeah it is important to support initiatives like this because when families are grieving the last thing you want to think about is do I have to work a couple extra hours do how am I going to pay for this? It's really really really overwhelming and so if we are in places of privilege to not only think about our own funerals but to help other families make their lives easier it's definitely something worth considering and my law reward each and every one of you for stepping up because this is super super super difficult for many families and it's great that there are resources out there to help people. MashaAllah you know MCC does a lot our Masjid also has some funds but you know I mean if you look at the cost here the the basic funeral services so basically as soon as the doctor is hurt you know states the cost of death you get a burial permit so the funeral home is going to charge around $2,000 here and what it does is transportation get this burial permit and then the hearse to take it to the cemetery so that's that's around $2,000 at the cemetery this is five pillars farm which is a muslim owned cemetery here in the Bay Area which is in Livermore. The adult burial cost is $5,900 and for a child it's $2,500 and if it's weekend or a holiday it's going to be $500 more. Brother Irfan a question that just came up and I think you touched base on it earlier but if you spell out a little bit more what is a funeral home compared to the function at the Masjid like if I lose a loved one do I contact the funeral home what role does the funeral home play and what role does people like yourself and the Masjid play? Yeah exactly so that's a good question so here the funeral home is not exposed at all it's always the Masjid so the first call that comes is the Masjid from the link and there are three contact numbers or four contact numbers and the call comes to us first and the family don't even have to worry about the funeral home at all. All they have to do is give us the information or there's a mobile app just fill that information and the rest we make sure you know the funeral home is on top of it we make sure the transportation is happening within two hours and we make sure the Goosal happens in the Masjid so all that happens in the Masjid is coordination and a Goosal facility. By the way the MCA Masjid does have a funeral director so sometimes we work with the MCA Masjid in Santa Clara to get the burial permit but other than that the family all they have to do is work with the the Imam or the volunteers and the website is there to update them as well and they also get emails you know so so basically our Lauri Masjid has a Goosal facility and that's what happens in the Masjid and we coordinate with the funeral home. At the end of the day they pay us we pay the the funeral home $2,000 we give them the invoice as well as far as the symmetry is concerned the individual has to pay the symmetry directly and here it's going to be a cashier's check or a cash you know no no no check so so symmetry they directly take the the cashier's check and and pay pay the symmetry five pillars and it's going to be five thousand a one. A question that came up is can you post a link in the chat to everyone of the website you mentioned and the phone number to contact? Sure. So basically here the the cost is $7,900 to $8,400 if it's a weekend you know and for a child it's almost $5,000. So what it basically takes in the symmetry right what basically takes you know what are the cost that goes into that $5,900 from what I am aware of is basically here in California every grave you will if you see the picture here grave liner so every grave has a grave liner but in this picture right the top part the top part is not going to be there it's just from this part all the way to the bottom where you will see the mud so you see it's just an outliner and then there is a top cover all these are made of concrete so this is laid on every grave just because of the law in California because of the earthquakes and stuff like that so those are mandatory ones. The grave sites itself cost $2,000 per site here and the rest of the $3,900 goes to this grave liner endowment fee the lid the marker so every grave has a marker just name and the date and then the opening and the closing of the grave cost so they all cost $3,900 and then you have oh so these are the main two costs most of the time right here in Bay Area we use only a cardboard carrier which is free to carry the deceased with the you know coffin inside so when so we don't so this is called also called casket but this is not lowered with the deceased you know so we just take the the person the deceased person and lower him and onto the grave we don't use any other casket but recently I've seen people using like brother Hanif who makes caskets I have seen two or three lately where some families demand that they want their you know dear ones to be buried in a wood wooden casket which is around $500 it could be like very yeah in various states I said actually in New Jersey the law requires people to be buried in a box and that's why that's the only reason why people are placing a box so it's super simple yeah that's that's correct here as well actually there are two couple of symmetries like the laundry and couple of other they mandate them to be in the wooden caskets you know so but whereas with five pillars which is a muslim run symmetry there is no such requirement so so all all all we do is carry the deceased after the coffin into the cardboard box and then we take them near the grave lift the body and place him inside the the grave so so this is the basic coffin which I'll go and into the practical part in a bit basically for men we use three you know piece of unstitched cloth one is like a shirt camis one is a is our like a lungy and for those who don't know what a coffin is can you explain what the shrouding of it is okay yeah this is basically we shroud after the goosal after the body bath we shroud every deceased what with the so the sunna is the three piece of unstitched cloth and this is just so one one has a slit here there's a back that looks like a shirt there's a back part on the front part with the slit for the neck and then there is a the biggest piece which is at the bottom and then you have one for the for the trouser side you know the is our so these are the basic things and this is the facility of at our masjid if you look at here this is lauri masjid in fremont islamic society of east bay so we have a facility of three mobs here so at any point of time we have we have seen many many many times three deceased and we do three genozes in a day at a time and then we have this one some someone sometime you know a large for a large person we use these to lift and lower and basically this is the table where we you know where we lay the the deceased and do the goosal so basically you this is the table there's a hole and there and there are these what you call lines to let the water run through at the end of it and get into the sink and you have water and these have vents ventilation and you know the rooms are kept clean so and after every goosal we have someone come in and and and it cost $150 so sometimes we also ask the masjid also ask a donation at least $150 just because it takes that much to clean up you know after every goosal so so this is the basic picture so that's all I have at this point there's a couple questions yeah again if you can post the obviously in a little bit if you can post the the link to the website you mentioned the phone number somebody asked about is there a place in the livermore cemetery dedicated for muslims or are religions well that is dedicated to muslims and and and there are many other cemeteries which are christian runs they have a portion of the cemeteries which are muslim ones so there's a designated area within that which is muslim ones and obviously those will cost more you know and it can go to $23,000 more it could be even $14,000 you know we are talking about eight and a half thousand dollars here that could be around $14,000 you know so so there is there is also one in Sacramento which is two and a half hours away from the bay area up north that that is also a muslim owned cemetery and that is a little bit cheaper because it's out of the bay area and for the local people there it's it's it's cheaper as well but but for people from the bay area it's going to cost cost a bit more so so what we plan next is you know so as soon as you know a deceased comes in you know we prepare him for the goosal so there are two aspects to it the goosal is basically washing so every deceased is given a goosal to you know purify him and then they are shrouded and then they are put in the cardboard casket and then after Zohar the janaza prayer is led and then they are taken by the herds to the the cemetery so if if you're ready then we can go jump into the the goosal as well as I mean the washing as well as the shrouding let's do that in the meantime brother Manir if you can send that I think you accidentally sent those links to just uh the panelists can you send that to everybody in the chat if you just select what says two to everyone who can send those links those are great resources thanks sorry I have this video presentation as well as I could post some money is it from the laury matthew door I'm putting on the mcc web page and then it links the laury matthew website okay perfect go ahead with your demonstration if you like okay um so is that okay I'm on yeah absolutely okay so I'm going to use my mobile phone and so basically what we are going to do so what happens is as soon as the deceased sometimes the the deceased come in the you know directly when they come in they are laid over the table if it is over a previous night we store them in this morgue and next day morning we um so we generally encourage the family members I personally encourage all the family members to participate because the hadhi said the hadhi says a person who involves and it was like brother Hanif mentioned 40 major sins are forgiven but in addition to that whatever we see you know of the deceased we have it is it's obligated upon us to keep it as amana we are not supposed to share any kind of imperfections you know lost limb you know bloodshot wounds or any kind of an autopsy things to to reveal it to any spouse or you know that's a key aspect of giving a goosal is is to keep it to yourself till you die any kind of an imperfections or shortcomings of the deceased that we see and then participate in the goosal you know 40 major sins are forgiven and and I and Tamim we are here all the time you know just to take advantage of those blessings you know and and and the key thing is no recitation of Quran in the goosal area we all do voodoo and come in we make sure we have all our aprons and PPE you know if it is a covid post covid we make sure we have PPE kit you know we wear them we wear glosses aprons and you know head covering as well as the shoe covering all those and we make sure you know one dua that we allow or let people know is Allahumma forgive the deceased you know we also make make it a point to tell ourselves Allahumma forgive us apart from that no recitation of Quran once the goosal is complete and the the washing and the shrouding we take them into a room where we allow the meharams to view the deceased and then we cover the head so those are the basic things and one other key thing is the satir satir is is you know modesty is very key in in the islam islamic religion so so for men the satir is the area between navel to below the knee so that area of of the deceased is always is always closed anything we do we do under the hood under the covers of that area from the start to finish so the first thing what we do is as if it is hospital it's going to be a hospital bag if it's if it's a covid case it's going to be a double bag sometimes it comes from home with the clothes so what we do is we cover the satir we're going to show in a second cover the satir and undo all the clothes and also we make it a point if we can remove any kind of variables like watch rings that are easily removable we do that some people have us the teeth sets if there is no rigor mortis set in you know and if it is easy to take out the you know the false teeth we take that as well so those are a couple of key things we don't let anyone cut nails or cut hair none of those sort you know and and all these things removable removals you know only if it is easily retrievable or taken out if it is not we leave it yeah i want to be mindful of time so inshallah we can go ahead so brother abir afman is going to switch cameras real quick and get the demo to show you all what the the the washing process looks like but a question that came up and it's an important one especially for people that have non-muslims in their family right maybe you embrace Islam and your vast majority of your family is a Muslim a question that often comes up is what role can my non-muslim family play in this process and it's very important to understand this because in Islam your family is your family right we don't if our if my brother or my dad is not Muslim i don't look at him as a non-muslim dad that's my dad right or that's my brother or that's my sister that's my mom right and so your family is your family and so it's really important to understand that and embrace that because Islamically we do have familial relationships and obligations to our loved ones and so in a moment of a funeral and if there's a washing well yes Muslims will step up and do the washings the men will wash the men the women will wash the women families can be in the room you can't be like oh you're not Muslim get out of here or you're not this you like get out like your family is your family and it's important that again we don't look at our family members as oh that's my non-muslim sister and that's my Muslim brother or this or that that is your family and so it's it's important to really understand that because i know that is often can be a tense moment and it's just important to throw away my opinion this is purely my opinion i'm not a scholar but it's important to throw away that cultural nonsense so if a family wants to be a part of the process again okay yes the man will wash the men and the women will wash the women that's more for other purposes pretty straightforward when you're handling private parts and this and that but being in the room saying goodbye to a loved one and just seeing them for the last time it is important that family is involved and there's not this you're not Muslim you can't be in here kind of nonsense okay that's that's correct one so i had a case where the father was a Christian and the mother was the Muslim and they had brought their son and you know so it was kind of 50-50 where they would give a goosal and then they would put them in a casket and go through a Christian way of burial and you know i brought the gentleman into the goosal area because generally only a Muslim can give a goosal to a Muslim but i make it a point to get all the non-muslims as well as the parent father especially and he was there watching the whole thing with so much of modesty that goes around it he was like he was breathless i mean he was he felt that he he it motivated him you know big time to to embrace even Islam you know to the extent of how much care we give that doesn't happen with Hinduism where you know they are just cremated or on the wooden pyre or most of the Christians do you know cremation you know so those kind of things that you don't see with Muslim goosal and burial so so before i'm going to switch on to the video so i turn on the video i have a mannequin here that i just made up at home here so i'm going to turn on the video here and show you the mannequin and then we get started each dollar so basically so this is i assume that this is the deceased and i have him on the table and you know it has you know the bear it has some coverings probably so the first thing what we do is and we lay him down on the so by the way the kibla for the deceased you know or the living and the dead as prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said is kaba so we make sure that the the person is laid in such a way that the right side of his is facing the the kibla the kaba side so that's very we make it a point and then before starting goosal we make give them make an intention of giving goosal to the mayit or the deceased to purify him and to also fulfill the obligation as well as according to the sunnah and for the sake of Allah so with those intentions and with those you know the things that i mentioned before about no Quranic recitation and those things we start off undoing the clothes so before undoing the clothes i have brother tamim here so what we do is quickly we have two towels we just lay down two towels there's another one as well so we make sure like i said the satir satir is the area between the navel and and below the knee so that area we make sure is covered all the time and so one vertically yeah yeah so this way one horizontally so we make sure the satir is covered and basically we undo the clothes what we do is basically unzip if it is a hospital bag or any kind of a thing what we do is unzip everything if you need we turn him on his left or right make sure each and everything is taken out of the of the deceased with the with the satir covered we also make it a point any kind of cubes you know cubings we take the consent i mean we ask the family members if they can take it out on our behalf because we are no experts here while doing this so that's why we tell if they are in the hospital to take out all those tubes and stuff away after after their disease to the hospital so we undo the clothes any kind of patches bed sores if it is very hard to take it out we let it stay there but any kind of a thing like a bandage or anything we make it a point to take it out with all this and one key thing is again when we have the satir covered whatever we do we make sure that we don't gaze at the private parts of the individual at no point of time all the time we have our gaze down and we start up with this and the first thing what we do like and this goosal goosal is washing this goosal washing is very similar to our juma goosal that we give for our juma or any any kind of a goosal that we give basically there are three parts to it you know the first thing we do is before doing that the first thing we do is to wash the private parts so the private parts and then any other area which is which is which has filth we make it a point to clean all those first and that is exactly what we do even in juma goosal and second thing is the vadoo vadoo is the second thing which we do and the third one is a body bath and and one key thing is we always start from the right and then do the left so these are the three major parts in a goosal which is very similar to what we do with our goosal for juma or any other goosal so the first thing what we do is is tinge is to wash the private parts assume that the the disease is completely taken off the cloth it's just the satir himself and the satir covered the first thing we do is lift him up and lift him up to the shoulder a bit and press his abdomen three times so this way the bowel we put all the muscles on the brow make sure all impurities come out of the of the disease so that's the first step before we start with istinja so for istinja the rule is we make it a point if you see there there are many small clothes like this where we tie wrap around we make it a point that the hand doesn't feel the private parts and and so we use small turkey towels like this and we soak it in water and we use soap as well and there are few brothers at least five or six around us to hold those towels up so he's holding one so he puts his hand down and make sure the front part of the of the private part is washed so we do this and throw away those towels we use as many as small towels are needed to clean the private on the front of the private part and also I make it a point to make sure that the groin area because these are the hard areas make sure that those areas are also washed and cleaned until they find they feel good about about this now as soon as the top part and then the groin is done we we we tilt him or the disease to the left so that the right side of the the private area from the back is is cleaned so you turn him you move the towels a bit to the other side so that you don't are not able to see the private parts now you lift one of the leg here so you have some clearance so you reach out under the satter to wash the backside of the private part so we make sure we do that with again throw away as many small clothes we need throw away and the same thing he will come over this side or if I am on this side I make it a point to do it from the backside from this so this way both the front and also once the backside of the private part is cleaned up I make it a point also make sure that the lower back and other hard areas are also cleaned so at this point the first step after pressing the abdomen the stinger it will be complete and in addition to that then before going to the second step which is the vadoo we make make it a point you know sometimes there are a lot of bloods blood and other fluids coming out of the mouth and nose and stuff like that so we make it a point to use a cotton swab to just clean up all those nasal so we just take a so the brother here has a cotton so he will wet it up with a cotton and just clean up the nose the left side of nostril the right side of nostril take out any blood or any of those that is there on the face the ears as well and sometimes because of the rigor motives you can't open the mouth wide so we also make it a point to just swab use a cotton swab to wipe the lips as well and the teeth as well so those are the part of the stinger where the you know all the dirt is cleaned up so that's number one now comes the vadoo the second part is the vadoo so we start with the right we just wash the palms the right palm three times and the left palm three times the faraida vadoo is done basically the faraida vadoo is washing the face three times between ear lobe to ear lobe from the top to the bottom of the beard every nook and corner of the face three times then we do the right arm till the so let's let's go and do it so so we're going to do take water and if and we want to make sure the water doesn't go into the nostrils into the body so sometimes we cover the nose with our palm and then we make sure that you know three times the face is washed so that's the taking care of the vadoo the face part which is the faraida and then we make sure the kill all of the fingers all the fingers between the fingers are washed three times all the way to the elbow below the elbow of the right so always we start with the right and then we go to the left so we started the face with the right and then we go to the the left side of the hand all the way to the elbow three times and the water we use is lukewarm water so it's similar to what we take shower with we feel good about the water so we make it a point that it is a mixed hot and cold and so it is good for that so once that is done the masa masa of the head is done so we make sure the masa of the head is one time is enough for this so and some people can also extend it to go all the way to the ears and finally we come to the to the leg ankle we we again kill all of the fingers from the right so the suna way is from the right side and you go all the way to the left side so you do the kill all of the fingers and also wash the ankles three times and same thing with the right leg and same thing with the leg so this basically completes the second part so after istinja we are then with the with the yeah the third one is we have to so now if you want to change before doing the voodoo if this gets dirty we change them now we go to the final giving a bath all we do is three times water bath we start before giving a bath we make sure we close the the nose and the ears we plug it in with the with the cotton we also cover the the mouth and also the ears and then we start with the body bath the body bath basically is the right side you have right side body bath three times and with the hand under the arms everything then we turn him around and and give a bath on the backside on the right side and then we do the same thing with the left and we complete the left so this basically and after this we press the abdomen once again the voodoo is not necessary after that we do that again that completes and the last is with the camphor we have camphor is some kind of an aromatic stuff that we put in the water and we we run run through him three times and that completes the goosal all that is that completes the goosal and basically what we use is some kind of a camphor here tablets we just crush them and put in the water it gives that aromatic so this completes the the washing and we now dry them up so so once we dry them up we go to the coffin so so is that okay now to go to the coffin part we got about two or three minutes left I want to give there's a couple questions that came in but yeah if you want okay so what we're going to do is you know like I said there are three pieces of clothes there's a big one that's a small one that's a small one so so there are three big there are going to be three big clothes not this one okay there's a big one okay so we lay out the bigger cloth so like I said it's an unstitched piece of cloth three three big cloths so we just lay out the the top one and then we we we have the the trouser part sorry so you can see the slit here can you show the slit yeah so if you see here basically there's a slit here and that's where the head is going to come there's the top part of the of the of the of the shirt and then you have the you have the the easel so I think we're almost done we'll just place the mannequin here and we'll just wrap him around just put it quickly and I know we're covering a lot today by the way we will be sharing this recording as well as additional resources we know there's so much to talk about and things to take away from this and so yes we will gladly send each and every one of you so once it is dried up once we are dried up you know with the satter is still covered you know so you see here the head the shirt the top part of the shirt we just you know the comey's that comes on top and at this point you know if there's ether we put the ether on the body as well and then we with the satter covered we can take out the two the two turkey towels and we have changed the turkey towels couple of times and once gets dirty so we have the satter still covered and the next one is the left side of the the isar is quickly so what we're going to do is just wrap around this put it on the leg and then we have the right side which goes on top so we have these two together and then the outermost is the is the biggest one so beneath this there are three tie ropes so basically we tie the next side the midsection and the and the head side so with this set you know we the thing that I try to tell the family is what what comes next is the three questions you know that that that is that is asked in the cover in the burial and that is key and I tell all the family members to you know prepare themselves to be in a position to answer those three questions in the burial in the burial by the munkara makir and so it's very important for us to say because our mouth is not going to speak it's our conviction on those things that's going to um because the life of the hereafter is from the burial you know from the once the person is buried that's when the life of the hereafter starts so I think that completes the wrapping and we show the the face for the the mehrems and then we tie them so there's a tie rope at the bottom we cover the midsection the leg and the head so that completes yeah jizakalak hair that is uh tremendous and again we will share this recording it's a lot it's a lot to process and the good thing is um these aren't things that inshallah that we'll have to do by ourselves they're volunteers and massages and funeral homes and other places that will walk uh people uh through it I want to get to a couple questions and one for you about the abrahman um is the uh we were talking about who can be in the room what about in a in a mahrum in a non mahrum case so if there is a female body on the table and let's say it's my sister-in-law on the table as a technically a non mahrum to that person can I look at the person's face who's allowed to see the face of the people that are deceased on the table yeah after the shrouding right after the shrouding you know the mehrems are generally the mehrems are allowed to see but it's it's a decision of the family you know if you ask a scholar they're going to say it's not allowed for a for non mehrem to see you know but but ultimately it's the family's call there you know some some are there to you know get their video started to share with someone out in in a different part of the world and stuff like that so we tell them we tell them after this is to you know it's safe not to you know you know so to mehrem you know it's because it's it's about the individual passed away he wants to make a you know safe transition into the cover into the hereafter because he's waiting to you know uh go through the bliss the the bliss of the of the you know grave and you know all those things and he doesn't want something like this to not not happen but the call is ultimately the family's you know great a lot of questions coming in i want to be mindful of time again we thank you all so much for taking the time on a beautiful saturday afternoon to have this very very important conversation so definitely give yourself the space and the and the credit for for doing that a great question that came in from arwa listening to dr ami's presentation earlier on the sonic perspective on death and dying seems to fit very well with the hospice philosophy of end of life care however there's a lot of families for whatever reason may not have the same embracing of it they may have misconceptions how do you dr ami how do you think the hospice philosophy of end of life care fits with the islamic perspective of dying yeah i think you don't have to turn any further than the sunnah uh the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was the best example on how to live and that includes to the very last moment that he uh was on this earth and if you looked at the last 14 days roughly of his life and how he was dealing with illness i think you can learn all that you need to know about what would be important for us as muslims at the end of life i think he provided us the perfect manual and hospice just to introduce it to people who don't know is a approach to care it's not an actual place most hospice is actually provided at home at a person's own home where everything is geared towards comfort so people on hospice don't have uh don't want to see the inside of a hospital again keep me as comfortable as possible for whatever time i might be left and i would say from an islamic standpoint if there were any more honorable way to die then at home and in the arms of your loved one then the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam would have died that way he died in on his wife's bosom on ayyashadullah anha speaking with her seeing his family members and community members in and out um and that was important in the last days of his life and we should do our best to emulate it now it's a packed question because a lot goes into making the transition to hospice from a medical standpoint i think it's the onus is on doctors to have good communication about health status prognosis treatment options etc uh also to have families to figure out what's important for a person um you know at the end of life but i do think that uh islam and the hospice philosophy go hand in hand i may be biased because i'm in this field but yeah yeah and again more reason to have these conversations when people are happy and healthy um and ask what their preferences um and there's actually great resources out there i do want to shout out let me see if i can bring them up real quick um let me just load this up i know we're tight on time um um there's a website sharia wiz dot com um they help you put together um legally certified legally certifiable islamic wills in all 50 states uh for 100 bucks and they actually are 100 bucks is great and so you let it go online and ask you a bunch of questions you can put together um healthcare directives um i think that one is like 59 bucks and it's certifiable and you can change it as you go so let's say in a few years you decide okay i don't want to use this anymore uh they're a great resource uh and they actually um and i'll post them in the chat but they actually gave us a promo code of two gods so for a 20 discount so instead of 100 bucks it's 80 bucks and that's a will you can spell this all out saying put me in a hospice um don't intubate me if there is something like this happens or do intubate me or do this or that or i want these people uh in the room uh during a genasi you can spell that all out in a will so that um your family and your your future loved ones don't have to fight and argue over this and so i definitely recommend no matter what your age is start thinking about these things and document those because these can be very very emotional and explosive things and it's important uh to address that uh but there's a question that came in you had mentioned that um there is varica and keeping the body washing private not to talk about what you see in the room and actually in our film we if you for those who've seen the documentary we actually even though we have consent to the families we don't show faces we don't show any kind of marks that reveal who that person is to respect the people's privacy and family um what are your thoughts on um let's say a family member can't make it or a family member overseas um if somebody facetimes them or puts the body washing uh on zoom um is that okay uh what are your i'm sure that's come up before somebody wants to show loved ones um what do you recommend in a situation like that uh you're on mute brother yeah yeah so so um so i have seen i mean most of the families don't encourage but i have seen uh um instances where one of the brother or the son is in uk and so there was a face time that was going on with uh during the goosal so except for the immediate family members who are away and it is son of the you know uh son who is away from home i've seen otherwise in most of the cases you know we don't encourage uh face time or uh anything within you know external set of people but most of the time it's just the immediate families the son the father the brother or the immediate family members have need to participate and they are more than happy to not share with anyone but i have seen instances where you know for the you know other son or the brother who couldn't make it you know a face time was allowed or you know it's again the family thing you know we tell them it's it's the family who is going to make the call there you know exactly your family is your family um and we don't make the distinctions like oh you can't be in here you can't watch or this or that it's important that it's a very difficult time and like i said before we each have different ways of dealing with this and so that is not the time to say oh you can't watch or you can't do this you can't do that um if it's reasonable it's not creating a burden if it's on son's phone um again it's not encouraged you know it's important just to focus um but we're not going to turn anybody away right and it's important uh to do that um i do want to give a last call um if there are any more questions and again i know we didn't cover everything there's so much more uh to talk about um i i guess uh dr rami um and we will send some resources about this but um how do you bring this conversation what do you recommend i know this is more of a family prediction or question but how do you bring up these conversations with your mom and dad about your preferences what advice would you give like three things um number one to say i need help with something seriously once you start off with saying hey i need your help with something and it's somebody who you love and you care about right imagine your father or your mother asking you that you need they need help with something your ears are going to perk up and say okay what what do you need um so starting off with that another way is to reference somebody in the family that died right you know uncle how he died how he spent his last days i want to talk to you about that and what i would want and i thought this happened well and i would want it for myself or i saw this happen and i would never want it for myself and then um last but not least if if you don't have anybody to to blame for bringing up this conversation you can always blame your doctor right my doctor really thinks we should have this conversation so um do you mind just taking some time to go through an advanced directive with me to tell you what's important to me at the end of my life um yeah i think those are our three prompts that i really like to encourage people uh to use when doing advanced care planning great that is fantastic and uh i want to uh be mindful of the time but uh thank you all uh so much again we can't thank you enough because i keep saying it but i have to keep saying it it's just you could be anywhere else and the fact that um you already been taking the time to join us just shows um the importance that you place on how much you love your family and your loved ones and may a law reward you uh for taking this time and i assure you that with this information um it will make things so much more easier because there's no easy way to deal with this um but these little things just even having a conversation giving yourself five minutes just to even think about this makes things infinitely like times easier and more bearable uh when they happen and so we thank you again and in shall we will like i said we will send you out this information along with your recording with that brother manier i don't know if there's anything else you want to say or anything else you want to plug for the mcc or he's uh just overcome with joy um and uh thank you all again uh and again thank you uh the folks at that mcc for putting this on uh keep supporting these programs uh it's important that uh we support programs like this and organizations that are involved with this and so thank you all so much uh for joining us today uh salamu alaykum