The sick husband was laying on his death bed. He had only hours to live, when he suddenly smelled tamales. He loved tamales more than anything else in the world (shirk-alert), especially his wife Chepa’s tamales which were known through out the land of Mexico as “Lo mejor de lo mejor.” The best of the best.

With his last bit of energy and breath, the sick, weak husband pulled himself out of bed, across the floor, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. Here, his wife was spreading the masa for a new batch of tamales.

As the sick, weak husband reached for one of the freshly steamed tamales, he got SMACKED and hit across the back of his hand by the wooden spoon that his wife was holding. “Leave them alone, pendejo!” she said, “They’re for the funeral!”

The morale of the story is that you should not commit shirk by worshipping tamales. When you die, you cannot take tamales with you. Fortunately, Paradise is better than the Dunya.

Maybe, Paradise will have tamales trees. Paradise will have things no eye has ever seen.

Qur’an 18:31 – “For them will be Gardens of Eternity; beneath them rivers will flow; they will be adorned therein with bracelets of gold and they will wear green garments of fine silk and heavy brocade; they will recline therein on raised thrones. How good the recompense! How beautiful a couch to recline on!”

Qur’an 9:72 – “Allah hath promised to believers men and women gardens under which rivers flow to dwell therein and beautiful mansions in gardens of everlasting bliss. But the greatest bliss in the Good Pleasure of Allah: that is the supreme felicity.”

Qur’an 47:15 – “(Here is) a Parable of the Garden which the righteous are promised: in it are rivers of water incorruptible: rivers of milk of which the taste never changes; rivers of wine a joy to those who drink; and rivers of honey pure and clear. In it there are for them all kinds of fruits and Grace from their Lord. (Can those in such Bliss) be compared to such as shall dwell forever in the Fire and be given to drink boiling water so that it cuts up their bowels (to pieces)?”