FloodList

 

Floods in Pakistan - Wrath of God?
By Haroon Hashmi, PhD
Massachusetts

“When Allah completed the creation, He wrote in His book with Him upon the Throne: Verily, My mercy prevails over My wrath.” Sahih al-Bukhari, 3194

The conventional Muslim response and reaction to natural disasters is to blame them on Allah’s punishment resulting from acts of human disobedience. The response to immense devastation caused by recent floods in Pakistan is no exception.

If assigning the disastrous outcomes of our own ignorance, incompetence, greed, and corruption to God is not blasphemous, then I am not sure what else is! When it comes to natural disasters, like the recent floods in Pakistan, we immediately provide a cover of “Allah ka azaab” to the damage caused mostly by our abject incompetence and negligence.

Then, as if we are doing God a favor by absolving Him, we say it is the result of our deeds and impiety; quickly relegating it to some unmeasurable and abstract realm to conceal how atrociously delinquent we have been in fulfilling our responsibilities. The solutions offered almost invariably, and by every Islamic group, are that we must do collective istighfaar or recite ayat-e- kareemah – whom are we really trying to fool? Furthermore, people who are most affected by these ‘God sent’ catastrophes are the poor and the unprivileged residents of underdeveloped rural areas; people who live a very simple life and are perhaps among the most pious worshippers of the all Merciful God. It is nothing less than a punch in the gut for grieving and suffering helpless souls who have just lost their loved ones, their home, and their livelihood to be told that somehow they have incurred the wrath of Allah because of their deeds; that somehow the Merciful and the Compassionate God was not happy with the simple life they were living in a state of shukr and sabr!

In verses too many to mention, the Qur’an invites us to reflect upon the signs of creation including the heavens, the cosmic order, the earth, the seas, the mountains; it calls on us to reflect, ponder, and study the natural sciences not only to know of God’s existence but also to benefit His creation and for the well-being of the society. Where is our sense of that responsibility? Where are our intents (niyyah) and actions (amal) to understand the forces of nature and to protect the vulnerable among us?

Yes, we must always ask for His forgiveness, and we must always ask for His protection from calamities, but we must play our obligatory part as well! Action alone does not dispense the need for dua but our religion does not profess the merits of dua without actions. As the Prophet (s.a.w.) said, “Tie your camel first, then put trust in Allah” (Sunan al-Tirmidhi 2517).

The devastation caused by the previous floods in Pakistan in 2010 should have been an eye opener for us; they affected 20 million people, caused close to 2,000 fatalities, displaced 6 million people, destroyed 1.8 million homes, and killed over 200,000 livestock (Henson, 2022)*. It was Allah ka azzab then too, wasn’t it? But did we take that as a wake-up call? Did we mobilize as a nation and take any concrete steps to prevent the scale of destruction and loss of human life from such catastrophes? No! Twelve years later, we find ourselves in the same spot. As David Fickling (2022) noted** that the systems of dams and canals that are meant to divert the waters of the Indus are “in a poor state of repair, thanks to years of underinvestment in maintenance; corruption; and disputes between Pakistan’s four provinces about the allocation of water funds.” There have been no meaningful efforts made for decades on the structural and non- structural measures to mitigate the risk of damage from such floods.

The impact of climate change is unlikely to go away anytime soon; the unprecedented heat waves and rising temperatures, variability of monsoon, and glacial melt in the northern areas of the country will continue to pose a similar threat in the years to come. Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world when it comes to the effects of climate change. It is time we get our act together and take it seriously; the very real threat of large-scale flooding is no longer a low-risk event but rather an expected effect of climate change in Pakistan. It is simply inexcusable, and would amount to criminal negligence, if we still do not take concrete measures with some sense of urgency to protect our vulnerable population in the future from threats of climate change, particularly floods; time is over to hide our incompetence, greed, and corruption under the cover of Allah ka azaab!

*Bob Henson. (2022). Cruel echoes of a 2010 disaster in Pakistan’s catastrophic 2022 floods. Yale Climate Connection. Retrieved from www.yaleclimateconnections.org

**David Fickling. (2022). Pakistan could have averted its climate catastrophe. The Washington Post. Retrieved from www.thewashingtonpost.com

(Dr Haroon Hashmi has a PhD in Public Health Epidemiology and works in a local pharmaceutical company as SVP of Regulatory Science. He is a free-lance writer.)