From Book XL of the Ihya ‘ulum al-din:

The Remembrance of Death and The Afterlife,
by Imam al-Ghazali, trans. Shaykh T. J. Winter. The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge: 1995.

 

 

 

Malik ibn Anas was seen [in a dream] and was asked, How did God deal with you?’  ‘He forgave me’, he replied, ‘by virtue of a phrase which ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan (may God be pleased with him) used to repeat whenever he saw a funeral: “Glory be to the Alive, Who perishes not!”‘