Natural Disasters and Pointless Sufferings of People
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA 94565

“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, and a Hell of Heaven.” - Milton

Why is there so much pointless suffering in the world? It is a very twisted and tricky question. In fact, a question like this is a potent weapon in the hands of both: the faithful as well as the faithless.
Floods, fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, bacteria and viruses, they all just come from nowhere, and mercilessly mow that stands in their way. In Pakistan, however, these natural calamities, somewhat selectively, visit the poor and the helpless, and that too with a vengeance. Why is that so? The rich and the powerful often, and as we saw in the recent floods, escape the full onslaught, or at worst, they just get a smattering of them. Why?
The question often repeated these days is: Does God hear us? Does He listen to the cries of those who are rotting on the roadside of the GT highway and the railway track? What good does God see when He sent this pointless, senseless and perhaps unjustified deluge of Biblical proportions on to those who already feared Him most; who already remembered Him best? A poor man’s faith is always under trial. Why would God subject him/her to further tests?
May God forgive me for even asking these questions. But sick as I often get by listening to such familiar answers as “Natural disasters mirror God’s wrath. People who oppose Allah’s will, they get this kind of punishment”, I always remain unconvinced about this kind of rationale, if it can be called a rationale. The religious pundits do not stop here after conveniently putting everything on God. It is fairly easy to do so, and it sells too. They then begin quoting the Qur’anic stories of the Prophets, and finally draw the conclusion which they already had in mind. “These floods are because Musharraf destroyed the Lal Masjid; he and our government waged an American war in Afghanistan against the Mujahideen. Repent for your sins and for their sins too. These floods are a warning of God to us to wake up and declare a Jihad against the infidels, etc. etc.” A natural calamity becomes a Viagra, sorry to say so, in the hands of these ‘holy men’.
These natural calamities are more of a test of human creativeness, a gift that Allah bestowed upon us at our original birth, than a case of His wrath. It is a test of how wisely we bring the gift of human ingenuity in play in the wake of such trials. Looking at these adversities, like floods in Pakistan, it is apt to say that it is a clarion call for the people to examine themselves in a deeper way, and in clearer terms. Things are pretty much messed up. It is a whistling bell for the people to think of realigning themselves to some healthier and better choices; to feel the urgency to reconnect themselves on healthier and positive grounds with their spiritual beliefs, with their Faith and with their mundane preoccupations. People just can’t rely on their imbecile leadership that just knows one art: how to hold their hats in their hands and beg to the world for succor, for charity. They have already turned a proud nation into a jumbled crowd of beggars. Or they can just keep damping the spirits of already broken people through their silly statements. “These floods are such that even a Super power would not be able to handle them”. Then they refer to the New Orleans floods. Or at best a statement like this, ‘The President has taken a serious notice of it”. “The PM has ordered an inquiry into the matter…”.
“A smooth sea has never made a skilled mariner”, is a wise English saying. What these Ulemas, and include in the list these politicians as well, never point out is the Qur’anic perspective of how natural disasters have often been overwhelmingly a source of boon, a blessing in disguise, and occasionally an urgent wake-up call for the people to set their divided house in order; to clean up the mess created over years, and all this, by none else but by themselves, by banking more on their own intellect, creativeness and ability than on somebody else’s money thrown to them in charity. A nation loses nothing unless it loses its sense of self-confidence and self-reliance. Thank God, this spark of self-reliance, an unshakeable Faith in the Mercy of God, and a sense of pride is still present and alive in the majority of the flood affected, poor and helpless people.
The most quoted Imam in sermons and speeches delivered from a mosque pulpit is Imam Ghazali . Recently, I read Maulana Shibli Naumani’s famous book, “Al-Ghazali” (1058-1111). On page 204-207, Shibli quotes Imam Ghazali’s diagnosis of the moral and spiritual decay that had taken place in the Muslim Umma of the 12th century, and the main culprit/s that had been responsible for that down fall. “People have become morally and spiritually corrupt due to the misdeeds of their rulers/Salateen, and Salateen/rulers have become corrupt due to the prevalent corruption in the Ulemas/religious leaders. Ulemas have become corrupt due to their intense love for power, pelf and position”.
In clear words, Imam Ghazali held religious leaders as the main cause of a nation’s moral decay some 900 years back. What was true then is equally true even now. Ulemas, according to the Imam, have become arrogant and power-hungry. They are jealous of each other; they have become time-servers and agents of the rulers; they have become hypocritical as they remain preoccupied in finding faults in others with a view to dividing the people; they preach the virtues of patience, Taqwa, piety, self-discipline, and truthfulness, but are themselves totally devoid of them. They are proud of being religious leaders, and therefore, they feel no need to have any moral compunctions in converting any evil into a virtue; they have become experts in the art of turning any harmless and healthy dialogue into a formidable debate. Finally, the Imam underpins the final cause of this decline in the Ulemas when he says that it is all due to their becoming the beneficiaries of the government favors, that keep coming to them in the form of stipends and gifts. How true!
Let us now focus on the disturbing questions that were raised in the beginning of this article. Firmness in Faith is the basic pre-requisite to find an answer to them. The Prophets’ prophet-hood was never a bed of roses for them. Trials and disasters, they taught us, should not shake one’s faith in the Mercy of God, and in the human ability and in human competence to overcome them. “Affliction has befallen me, but You are the most merciful of the merciful”, Sura 21:83, says Hazrat Ayyub. It was Shaitan who doubted Hazrat Ayyub’s faith, and Shaitan, we are told, is not as much anti-God as he is anti-man. His challenge and target is man, not God.
The Prophets, and most importantly our Prophet, taught us how to convert adverse and hostile circumstances into an opportunity, into a profitable enterprise. The people of Pakistan can now bring about a radical change in their own lives as well as in the behavior of their leaders after a disaster like the floods. Either they can just sit and whine and moan and aggravate their own predicament, and thus end up making two disasters out of one, or stay optimistic; learn self-reliance and rebuild themselves and their homes and lands on modern lines, on patterns that are proper, firm and durable that meet modern standards. Pakistan grew out of seams in all directions in the most haphazard manner as its population grew. It should stop this pattern of growth now.
Let honesty be the rule in each step taken towards the reconstruction of the country. One reason rich nations do not pave a street every year, do not construct roads every other year, do not lay out sewerage and gas lines after the roads have been constructed, because they do it once and do it the right way and then move on. A friend of mine in the PWD would always smilingly look at the sky each time some dark clouds would show a streak of lightning. When I would foolishly ask him why he always felt happy at the prospect of a distant storm, he would say: “Ashraf, the prospect of my bright future and your next mango party is hidden in these dark clouds”. “But how?”, I would naively enquire. “Even a few drops are enough to wash out some 50 side embankments. But this storm seems promising”. Bridges and embankments and schools and what not, all appear and disappear on the paper. Watch the beautiful Indian movie, “Daddy, you are great”.
The adversities that visit us often remain a riddle to us. We often fail to see any goodness in them. But it is so because of our own limited knowledge. The plagues that came to the Egyptians who had enslaved the Israelites became instrumental in their weakening. The Muslims’ debacle in the Battle of Uhud became a wake-up call for them; the peace pact of Hudaibiyia came to be remembered as “Silent victory”. The liberation of the Israelites passed through those plagues. In other words, God remains fully involved in the process. And God is very much involved here too.
Yes, the pain and sufferings that often accompany these earthquakes, floods, pandemics remain beyond human comprehension. Benjamin Blech in his interesting book, “If God is Good, Why Is the World So Bad?”, gives some interesting and convincing examples. I will add some of my own. The Qur’an says, “Verily, with hardship, there is relief”, 94:6, or, “May be that you dislike a thing that is good for you” 2:216. The world is bad because of the bad performance of its residents. The element of relief does not lie on the surface as we often expect it to be.