Why do we grieve and what can we learn from celebrity deaths
By Omar Suleiman | 2026-01-06T16:02:46.07133+00:00 | Topic: Hereafter
Why Do We Grieve and What Can We Learn from Celebrity Deaths?
Friday Khutbah by Omar Suleiman
Opening
We begin by praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala by bearing witness that none has the right to be worshipped or unconditionally obeyed except for him. We bear witness that Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) is his final messenger. We ask Allah to send his peace and blessings upon him, the prophets and messengers that came before him, his family and companions that served alongside him, and those that follow in their blessed path until the Day of Judgment, and we ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahumma ameen.
Remembering Myles Rahimi
Your brothers and sisters, many of you probably don't know or have not memorized the date for a reason. Exactly one year ago we prayed janazah on brother Myles Rahimi, the son of our brother Parvez. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make it easy for him, your wife, your family. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala comfort you. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala join you all together in Jannatul Firdaus, and I want to start with that. Allahumma ameen.
I want to start with that for a reason. It was one year ago that we lost Myles, 24 years old, in this community. Most of us in this community did not know him that closely. Most of us knew his smile. We knew his warmth. We saw him a few times, but very few of us had an involved relationship with him outside of his family. But still when he died, there was so much pain that we all felt for the family, seeing the pain in our brother's face and reminding him and his family today that they're in our du'as because I know how hard it is for that one year to pass. SubhanAllah.
It's strange that so many of us probably loved him, those of us on the outside, more in his death than we did in his life, meaning we didn't know him that much when he was alive. But when he passed away, we saw those few images. We remembered those few interactions and that caused us to love him. But when it comes to the family, they still have the childhood memories, they still have the pain of every birthday that passes, the pain of every significant date that passes, and the memory that they would have of their son is so much different from the way that we would remember a person of that sort. And I want us to actually think first and foremost to make du'a for them on this day. This is a very difficult day for this family. And so make du'a for them and make sure that you comfort them insha'Allah and let them know that they're in your du'as today and that we remember that painful episode in this community and that we will remain connected as much as we can and try to be a source of comfort to them.
The Human Nature of Connection Through Loss
Then a question: Why is it that so many of us connected more to him in death through a few pictures and a few interactions than when he was alive in our community? What is it about that human exposure that makes us see people in such a different light? And this is exactly what I want to speak about insha'Allah today.
Last week we had our brother from the Uyghur community talk about the pain that the Uyghurs are going through, being subjected to that cruelty and that oppression at the hands of the Chinese government - millions of people in concentration camps. You listen to them speak and they speak about a mother that they haven't spoken to in years, a father that's disappeared, a brother, a sister, a brother-in-law, an aunt and uncle, a child that they have no connection with over the last few years and are left to their own devices to think about how bad it must be for them.
And I was here as that brother went through the statistics, and I've been through many of those presentations. His brother had, he went through the statistics about what's going on to the Uyghur community - over three million people in concentration camps, completely disappeared from our sights. Most of us when we sat here and he talked about that, we sat here and yes, it's painful to hear those numbers. It's painful to hear those statistics. But the moment that caught everyone was not some brutal video where someone was being sliced into pieces. It was not the image of someone with amputated limbs. It was actually the short video that was played of that father that came out of those camps who had been subjected to such torture that when he saw his own little daughter, he couldn't recognize her anymore - the blank face that he had when he saw his wife and his daughter due to the trauma that he had experienced.
And it's actually very profound what Allah puts in us. That incident was more painful for us to witness, many of us - and I'll speak to myself first - than to hear a number like 3 million or 5 million people being in concentration camps. Why? Because 3 million and 5 million remains a number, but each one of those 3 to 5 million people has a family. Each one of them have those that grieve over them and that don't see them as a statistic. But that's just who we are as human beings. That's how Allah programmed us. When we see exposure or when we are exposed to those types of things, then we're likely to feel a deeper human connection. And that's the rahmah, the mercy that Allah has put in our hearts. And that's a good thing.
The Importance of Mercy in Our Hearts
If you don't feel pain when you see people in pain, if you don't feel pain when you see humanity in front of you going through whatever it is that it's going through, especially your brothers and sisters from the Uyghurs and Gaza, Idlib, all over the world where the oppression is just ramping up - if you don't feel
pain in a human connection, that's not good for your heart. That's a sign of a lack of rahmah, a sign of a lack of mercy.
The Kobe Bryant Case Study
And so last week when Kobe Bryant tragically dies in a helicopter crash, it set off a range of emotions and it was fascinating to see how different people reacted to it and how different people are reacting to it right now. Over the last week, I've had parents tell me how frustrated they are with their children for how devastated they are over the death of Kobe Bryant. "Why is it that you are so devastated over the death of an NBA star? The man had it all, he lived a life of glamour. You know, he has everything. There are so many other people that die and that go through tragedy all the time. Why are you so sad over this?" And parents will actually admonish their children. People will admonish people online. Of course. MashaAllah, we have the online masha'ikh, right, that will admonish everyone and say "what is wrong with you and how dare you feel any type of mercy for this, how dare you feel pain and stop feeling so much pain."
Reconciling Valid Emotions
And I want to reconcile as much as I can here for a moment that sometimes there can be two valid emotions that are at odds with one another. The valid emotion of mercy that someone has in their heart - a child or an adult - when they see a picture of a man and his daughter that perished so tragically, and the daughters and the family that they leave behind, the sudden nature of death to someone that they've been exposed to for a very long time. Some children having grown up with him, some children having imagined themselves being him on a basketball court - all of that. That's a valid emotion and we should not try to invalidate that emotion. We should try to channel it.
Don't crush your children because they feel that great sadness over that death. Instead help them process that emotion to where they can channel it in a way that's productive. "Well, how many other people do die and they don't get this tribute? Don't they deserve that type of tribute as well? How many people are desecrated, have their dignity and honor taken? How many people die so tragically, usually at the hands of another person, and we don't really care for them? We don't learn their names. We don't connect with them."
That's not... You are wrong or you have a problem because you feel that emotion. That's rahma. That's mercy in the heart. And so let's start with that. Let's start with the first valid emotion here and not try to invalidate it.
The Prophet's Mercy as Our Example
I cannot imagine the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) looking at an image of a father and a daughter smiling, hugging each other, clearly a lot of love between them, having perished as tragically as they did, and not feeling rahmah in his heart and not feeling that pain. I can't think of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم)
seeing that - and I'm not, I usually don't like to do "if he was here" - but there's some things that you can bank on certainty. (رَحْمَةً لِلْعَالَمِينَ) - a mercy to the worlds" (Quran 21:107). I can't imagine the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) with his capacity seeing that image and not feeling pain. "Fa la Allah kabahi" - on that's like Allah, I thought of him, the one who worried both over the dunya and the akhirah, the salvation of every single human being that came around him.
That's mercy. That's mercy, and you have to remember that this is the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) who was an orphan himself looking at three orphan daughters. No money is going to be able to replace the father in their lives. Nothing is going to be able to take care of that. The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) had that depth and it was the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) who stood up when the funeral of an unknown Jewish man passed by and the Sahaba were surprised. And what were the words of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم أَلَيْسَتْ نَفْسًا) - "Isn't it a human soul?" (Bukhari hadith 1312(
I can't imagine the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) simply turning his face and saying "whatever, there are bigger problems to worry about." It's a valid emotion of rahma and mercy that Allah puts in our hearts. We shouldn't negate it. We should not admonish our children because they feel hurt. We shouldn't admonish people when they feel that hurt and pain. Some people don't know why they feel so hurt. I'm one of them who, yes, I would hurt over it, but a lot of people would say "I don't know why I've had so many people say I don't know why I'm grieving so much. I feel a little guilty for the amount of grief I have over the death of Kobe Ryan. It's not making sense to me." And I'll get back to that in a minute.
The Other Valid Emotion
The valid emotion that exists on the other side, which is a valid emotion as well: What about the others? Also a valid emotion. Starting with the other passengers on the plane that don't get the tribute, that don't get the tweets, that don't get the tears on TV, that don't get the endless coverage. Whose deaths just seem so insignificant when compared to Kobe Bryant and his daughter? And subhanAllah, if you were to walk into a grocery store in Dallas, you would, there's a possibility you would bump into the brother of John Altobelli who actually lives here. John Altobelli, his wife and daughter all perished in that helicopter crash. You'd see him and you wouldn't know that that was his brother, his sister-in-law, his niece that were in that helicopter as well. And he was interviewed on local Fox and he said "Kobe Bryant deserves all the press he's getting and he was a tremendous person, but so was my brother. Different person, different sports, but same kind of personality. He was a great giver. I want people to know that about him."
Can you imagine the pain those families are feeling right now that their loved ones are seemingly insignificant in this? So that's a valid emotion.
Channeling Our Emotions Productively
How do we get productive on that side? The way that you're productive with that emotion of natural mercy is good. You feel empathy when you see a father who lost his daughter or who died with his daughter and the three daughters. That's a good thing. That's rahma. How do I expand that? How do I expand it? It's not how do I crush it? How do I expand it and make it more inclusive, more expansive, so I can include those who I've been ignoring all of this time? Maybe how do I expand it?
The productive emotion on the other side: Imagine if we exposed ourselves more to our brothers and sisters in Idlib - over 20 of them that perished in a day this week - in Gaza, the Rohingya, the Uyghurs. All of the... imagine if we exposed ourselves more to them. Imagine if we humanize them. Imagine if we took the time to learn about them. Imagine if we connected ourselves with our brothers and sisters that have been invisibilized by oppression here and abroad. Imagine, you know, there's a scene in the Joker movie - and if you haven't watched it, I'm not recommending you go watch it per se - where, you know, he talks about the five men, these five rich guys, "Why does everyone feel bad over five rich guys? You would kick a homeless person on the street and not care about them."
Imagine if we connected ourselves to brothers and sisters that often disappear, our own brothers and sisters that often do not get that type of exposure. Because if we expose ourselves to people, our heart naturally will expand.
The Prophet's Teaching on Expanding Hearts
What did the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) say to Abu Huraira radiallahu anhu, or when the man came to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) as narrated by Abu Huraira, said "my heart is hard"? He said "you need to spend more time with an orphan. Expand your hearts." (Ahmad hadith 7566)
Just like gratitude expands - (وَلَئِن شَكَرْتُمْ لأَزِيدَنَّكُمْ) - "And if you are grateful, I will certainly give you more" (Quran 14:7). Gratitude expands. Empathy actually expands if you process it in a healthy way, exposing yourself further. Empathy expands.
So instead of saying "why do you feel so much pain over the death of the superstar and celebrity? And there are so many other people that die," how do I expand them? How do I start to feel a greater sense of empathy for the people that die and don't often have the tribute or the supports that a Kobe Bryant would have?
Understanding Parasocial Relationships
We also have to think about this complex that exists today. You know, I'm not a psychiatrist, but if you read about parasocial relationships and this connection, this bizarre connection that we develop with people on TV and people, you know, on the Internet, people that we never meet in life, but we feel like we know them. We escape to them. They are more a part of our lives and we know them more than we know our own neighbors. Some of the brothers and sisters that maybe moved from other countries, you
don't care who Kobe Bryant is, but you might be able to connect back to a celebrity. And I remember, you know, when Michael Jackson and Sheikh Abdullah Jibreel rahimahullah died the same day, how many people were grieving over a scholar versus a singer? But it's "hey, that's I grew up with him. I don't, you know, I saw him. I saw him every day. He was dancing across the screen. It's different," right?
How do we understand this in our day-to-day? Parasocial relationships, which are these connections that we forge with people that we don't really know but we feel like we know, often fill the void with real relationships that we don't have. And we have an epidemic of loneliness now, more so probably than any point in human history. People suffer now more from loneliness than ever before. And so we develop these attachments to people that seem larger than life. We know celebrities more than we know our next-door neighbors.
What point in human history can you go to where people know more about the family life and every single detail of someone than they know about the person that lives next door than right now? And that should give us some pause.
The Psychology of Celebrity Attachment
A lot of times we escape our own troubles in life to go to their glamorous lives and we see their glamorous lives and it seems so wonderful. And then when their lives fall apart, we feel betrayed. "Hey, this wasn't supposed to happen to you. This happens to people like us. Doesn't happen to people like you."
In fact, subhanAllah, if you read historically, people in poor societies, poor and the lowly classes in societies, grieve more for the rich and the elite when they die, especially if they're perceived to be benevolent or they had some sort of an impact on their lives. They feel a lot of pain, even though when someone from my village dies, it's really hard to take care of those that are left behind. When someone from that class dies, you know, they're not gonna have to worry about their expenses. They're not gonna have to worry about whether or not they'll be able to afford school or what the implications are financially. They don't have to worry about those things, but still there's an attachment that we develop.
There's a psychiatrist in Seattle by the name of Dr. Jill Gross. She said "our relationships with celebrities don't necessarily follow typically understood measures of time and space, making them subconsciously immortal to us. They don't even age with us. You still remember them in their prime. They don't even age with us." It's a different type of attachment.
And so because they have oversized influence in our lives while they're alive, their deaths also have oversized influence to us, even with their own imminent deaths. "I'm more sad about the death of this person than I'm about the fact that I'm gonna go one day too. And I don't know what's gonna happen to me."
Our Disengagement from Death
So that's one of the connections that we make, and we have to prosecute ourselves for this tragic disengagement that we have with death. You know, and I was reading - brother Will Bayarid posted an excerpt from a book about how in Victorian times, children used to be kept away from intimacy and birth and they likely never even witnessed a birth or witnessed intimacy. But they would all be very familiar with death. Why? Because when the elderly age, everyone in the house has to take care of the elderly, and then you know there's the washing and the burial process. There's no professional thing to do that. Everyone is engaged. So people witnessed death.
Now it's been reversed, not just storing the elderly away as we do in our societies, but also how many people have the experience of actually washing a dead body, putting someone in the ground that's beloved to them? What is that whole experience like? And that's something we have to remember. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم taught us to engage, not to engage death, not just to remember it, but when we have opportunities to participate in the ritual of it, to remind ourselves. Because people are disengaged from that concept altogether. And so when it hits, it seems unreal.
Triggers of Personal Loss
And for some people, of course, there are those that have lost loved ones that when they see the death of someone publicly, it reminds, it triggers their own loss. That's also a psychological component, a human component. "I buried someone beloved to me. Every time I see someone burying someone beloved to them, it reminds me of that pain."
I was reading sister Ibtihaj Muhammad talking about her sister rahmatullah alayha who passed in Ramadan and how the whole thing brought it back to her. A lot of people express that sentiment as well: "I've buried someone beloved to me. It reminds me of the tragedy of the separation of families that death brings."
Learning from Kobe Bryant's Legacy
As for Kobe Bryant himself, beyond just the natural mercy that we feel in our hearts and the prayer that we can make for his family, his wife, his three children that are left behind, that Allah give them comfort and guidance and tranquility and healing - and really mean that - for the family that's left behind, no money is going to be able to compensate for the loss of a father, loss of a husband.
So beyond that, what do we do? We can look to some of his good deeds. We can celebrate some of those good deeds without turning him into a prophet, without overlooking some of the more problematic aspects of his legacy which hurt a lot of people, without doing any of that. What can we learn from that?
Well, for one, if you think about subhanAllah what this conversation provoked in terms of "girl dad," the father of daughters, and the love that a father has for their daughters - something that the Quran spoke to very early on: (وَبُشِّرَ أَحَدُهُم بِالْأُنثَى - "when one of them is given glad tidings of a daughter" (Quran 16:58) - and the love that he spoke about for his four daughters. Now, he would have been happy to just keep on having daughters. He didn't want any sons. We could learn from that, that love that a father would have for his daughter, and he talked about what that meant for him in his life.
There's a brother by the name of Dr. Amir Hassan Loggins who wrote an article for BET called "Kobe Bryant and the Father Mentality," and he said something very beautiful. He said:
"I cannot relate to Kobe Bryant the Los Angeles Laker. I can't fathom winning an NBA championship or earning an Olympic gold medal. But I wholeheartedly can relate to Kobe Bryant the father, the man who loved and dedicated his life to his children. He was my favorite version of Kobe. Your parents give you a name when you're born, but then there is a moment in life when a new name presents itself as a gift. This time your child names you. Some say Baba, some say pops, some say daddy, some say dad, but it all translates to the same thing: father. It's a name that you must earn. It's a name that you must live up to. You are a father. Fatherhood is beautiful. It is boundless. It can make you feel as full as the belly of a feasting fool, and at other times as empty as the stomach of one starving during famine. At moments it hurts us deep, at others it hugs us tightly, and it's what makes a beatific struggle."
It's a beautiful reflection. Some of us saw a dad there. You see a father and you relate to that. And we start to take lessons from that. That's one thing that you can take from the victims of police brutality.
A Personal Story: Jordan Edwards
No family connected, or I felt a greater connection to, than the family of Jordan Edwards who, a few years ago - two years ago, in fact - was murdered here. Fifteen-year-old child shot in the head by a police officer in a car, doing absolutely nothing wrong. In the head, his brains blowing out in the laps of his brothers who were so traumatized by that incident that they couldn't sleep with the light off. You know, boys that are teenagers, that are grown, that did nothing to deserve witnessing that tragedy. And the father, I remember looking at Odell Edwards, the father of Jordan Edwards, who now is forgotten in the press, who did everything he possibly could to raise those kids so that they don't have to witness that type of tragedy, right? His young black boys could be protected in a crazy society, but it happened anyway.
And subhanAllah, I'll never forget - and this is actually where my personal opinion on Kobe Bryant changed - when Kobe Bryant sent a bunch of autographed jerseys and sneakers to the brothers of Jordan Edwards. And that was the first time they'd smiled in weeks. That's something we can admire. That's something we can benefit from - caring, understanding as a father what it must be like seeing pain in another father's eyes and learning from those things.
The Prophet's Teaching on Death
But ultimately it comes back to us. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said: أَكْثِرُوا ذِكْرَ هَاذِمِ اللَّذَّاتِ الْمَوْتِ - "Be frequent in remembering the destroyer of pleasures: death." (Tirmidhi hadith 2307)
He said صلى الله عليه وسلم - and this is a hadith from Ibn Umar radiallahu anhu that you often don't hear - that a man came to the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and he said "which of the believers is best?" Who's the best of the believers? He said أَحْسَنُهُمْ خُلْقًا - "the one who has the best character." And then he said "which of them is the wisest?" The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said : أَكْثَرُهُمْ لِلْمَوْتِ ذِكْرًا وَأَحْسَنُهُمْ لِمَا بَعْدَهُ اسْتِعْدَادًا أُولَئِكَ الْأَكْيَاسُ - "The wisest amongst them are those that remember death frequently and are the best at preparing for it. Those are the wisest of people." (Ibn Majah hadith 4259)
They put death in front of them and they craft their life accordingly. They don't get deflated, depressed by it, manage it unhealthily. They use that thought of the janazah and they craft their entire life in accordance with that janazah. "How do I want my janazah to be? How do I want to meet my Lord?" Everything goes from that.
Final Advice: Pray as if it's Your Last
And so I end with the advice of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم where he said: إِذَا قُمْتَ لِصَلاتِكَ، صَلِّ صَلاةَ مُوَدِّعِ - "If you stand up for your prayer, pray as if it is your last prayer." (Ibn Majah hadith 4171(
Whether that lesson comes to us through the loss of a beautiful young 24-year-old in our community or a 41-year-old celebrity that we never actually knew except through the screens and the images remember. Remember the most important relationship is your relationship with your Lord, and you have to ask yourself what you've prepared for your meeting with him. And that's what made Muhammad Ali so great. The greatest athlete and one of the greatest people that this country knew, he said "God doesn't care if I beat Joe Frazier. God wants to see what I'm going to do in this life to get to heaven. That's what God cares about. He doesn't care if I beat Joe Frazier or if I become a world champion. The records go; the only records that matter are the ones that are going to be presented to you of your deeds."
So what's your own legacy? What's your own book look like? What will you leave for people to pray for you in this life? What will you take with you for Allah and the angels to pray upon you in the hereafter?
Don't Wait to Reconcile
The second thing: لَا تَقُولُوا الْيَوْمَ مَا تَعْتَذِرُونَ مِنْهُ غَدًا - "Don't say things today that you're gonna have to apologize for tomorrow." (Paraphrased advice)
You know, in all the tributes pouring out after the death of Kobe Bryant and people talking about their last memories of him, there're gonna be so many incidents that you're not going to hear about where people are embarrassed and losing so much sleep and beating themselves up because they probably didn't have a good last interaction with him. They might have had a fight with him. They might have parted ways there. There are so many stories you're not gonna hear. Some of them will be honest - Shaquille O'Neal talking about how it's been years since he actually spent time with him and regretting it and crying on TV and saying that "I'm gonna do a better job with the people around me to call them." And then you have these stories of other people reconciling - Kevin Durant and Kendrick Perkins, those of you who don't know basketball, don't worry about it - reconciling because they said the death of Kobe Bryant caused them to put their feud aside.
What do we learn about the fact that whether you, if you're a star with the best helicopter in the world or you drive a 1990 whatever type of car or you're just walking in the street or you're the healthiest person or the most unhealthy person, death can snatch you away from people just like that? Do you really want the last thing to be between you and someone that's beloved to you and important to you a fight or a feud? Squash those grudges. Because if one of you dies before the other one and you don't get a chance to squash it, that's a lifetime of regret and it might even have implications in the akhirah and the hereafter.
Don't Long for What Others Possess
And finally - لَا تَتَمَنَّوْا مَا فَضَّلَ اللهُ بِهِ بَعْضَكُمْ عَلَى بَعْضٍ :said صلى الله عليه وسلم The Prophet for what other people possess." (Paraphrased from Quran 4:32)
I want you to think about how rapid and sudden the nature of death is. Kobe Bryant walked out of his mansion with his daughter who he loved very much. Who knows? Allah knows what those last moments were like between him and his family. Maybe it was just another day. "Hey, we're getting on our helicopter. We're gonna go to Gigi's basketball game." But the point is that within an hour, if you would have told that man walking out of your mansion with all the money that's on you, all the money in your accounts, the helicopter that you just got on, your private pilot, that in one hour you're gonna be an international headline with RIP next to your name.
How crazy is that? SubhanAllah, like really think about that. And all of a sudden your entire... Everything he earned, that palace, those shoes, the car, the limo that probably took wherever it is, or his private
helicopter pad, means absolutely nothing at that moment. That's a reminder. That's a powerful reminder for all of us to think about.
And right now, there is no difference in the grave between Kobe Bryant and the other eight people in that helicopter. Whether we remember and choose to memorialize one or two of them as opposed to all of them, whether one's grave has a lot more, there's whatever it is that's built on top of it, all nine of them have the same thing that they're going through at this point. All nine of them have to proceed with meeting their Lord, and that's the case for all of us - celebrities, heads of states, boxers, basketball players, movie stars, comedians, and the homeless person that dies in the street of Dallas absolutely unnoticed, and the oppressed Muslim brother or sister that dies in those concentration camps unnoticed. At the end of the day, in the realm that they go to, all of this is absolutely irrelevant.
- What are we doing with our own priorities? What are we really longing for? What are we aiming for? That's a lesson for all of us to take as well, old and young, hurt or not hurt, whether we like Kobe or don't like Kobe, whatever parts of his legacy we want to celebrate or desecrate - that's something all of us really need to take a step back and say "wow, that's it, huh? Just like that and it's all gone."
Closing Du'a
We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to prepare us for that day. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to allow us to live our lives in a way that's pleasing to him, to allow us to meet him while he is pleased with us. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make the end of our lives the best of them. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to grant us a good ending, a good death. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to grant us a good ending, a good death. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to grant us a good ending, a good death.