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Desert_Son
EGYPT
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 Topic initiated on Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - 1:46 AM 
Tsunamii and God's will
Assalamu Alaikum,
I wonder what is the Islamic understanding of such a terrible earthquake.Do we say God did it for a reason? what could be such a reason and how can this reason solve the conflict between God being the most loving God and between God allowing or making many innocent people suffer such a terrible thing.
Shokran in advance
Edited by: Desert_Son on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 1:47 AM |
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Junaidj
CANADA
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Posted - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - 2:49 AM 
Perhaps you would have asked, why did God let Hitler kill so many people, or let Pharoah feed so many babies to the crocodiles of the Nile. and so on and so forth.
Please see Sister Henna Khan's piece on this.
http://www.studying-islam.org/articletext.aspx?id=933
My opinion from a different discussion, i.e., on whether this was Divine scourge or not, is as follows:
my opinion is that the scourge of God, comes when
a) a Prophet is sent
b) people reject the Prophet
c) it is clear beyond doubt that people reject the message blatantly
d) Recall Abraham's conversation with God on Sodom in the Bible (even if there are 10 good people, he would not destroy Sodom)
The disaster was an outcome of nature. it is a test of patience for some, and a test of humanity for others. [had it been scourge then why is AIDS/famine killing Africans, and why these disasters on Asians, it is as if the North Americans and Europeans are innocent??]
After all none has the right of Itmam ul Hujjah after the Prophet. And Itmam ul Hujjah replaces divine scourge when the Prophet achieves authority. Also, both divine scourge and the Itmam are exclusive to the Age of the Prophets.
I agree with Sister Henna Khan's opinion at studying-islam.org in this regard. I also agree with Khawaja, in that the whole Noah, Lot scene (divine scourge)the righteous were saved, and in the Moses/Muhammad (pbuh) case (Itmam ul Hujjah) only the infidels were slayed after the ultimatum.
Edited by: junaidj on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 2:51 AM |
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Junaidj
CANADA
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Posted - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - 3:26 AM
another reason why Tsunami cannot be considered as Divine scourge is that the bastards are roaming freely.
Usually I am against the death penalty, but if there is one case I want justice meted out harshly is in the follwoing one.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/01/04/indonesia.children/index.html
Traffickers threaten Aceh orphans
Indonesian authorities have taken steps to protect displaced or orphaned children from traffickers after last week's tsunami disaster, barring people from leaving the country with children under 16 from its hard-hit Aceh province.....
And a couple was arrested on charges of attempting to traffic in children in the city of Medan, which he said was "notorious" for the practice -- "both for adoption and for the sex trade." |
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Desert_Son
EGYPT
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Posted - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - 6:58 PM
quote:
Perhaps you would have asked, why did God let Hitler kill so many people, or let Pharoah feed so many babies to the crocodiles of the Nile. and so on and so forth.
Those examples are better understood through the concept of "free will"
quote:
Please see Sister Henna Khan's piece on this.
http://www.studying-islam.org/articletext.aspx?id=933
Thank you. I scanned through it and will read carefully.
quote:
My opinion from a different discussion, i.e., on whether this was Divine scourge or not, is as follows:
my opinion is that the scourge of God, comes when
a) a Prophet is sent
b) people reject the Prophet
c) it is clear beyond doubt that people reject the message blatantly
d) Recall Abraham's conversation with God on Sodom in the Bible (even if there are 10 good people, he would not destroy Sodom)
The disaster was an outcome of nature. it is a test of patience for some, and a test of humanity for others. [had it been scourge then why is AIDS/famine killing Africans, and why these disasters on Asians, it is as if the North Americans and Europeans are innocent??]
Does "outcome of nature" make God not responsible of it? He created nature and those earthquake were there on earth maybe even before our coming.
quote:
After all none has the right of Itmam ul Hujjah after the Prophet. And Itmam ul Hujjah replaces divine scourge when the Prophet achieves authority. Also, both divine scourge and the Itmam are exclusive to the Age of the Prophets.
Why is it exclusive to the age of prophet? does it mean that itmamul hujjaj is not attainable after the prophet age?
quote:
I agree with Sister Henna Khan's opinion at studying-islam.org in this regard. I also agree with Khawaja, in that the whole Noah, Lot scene (divine scourge)the righteous were saved, and in the Moses/Muhammad (pbuh) case (Itmam ul Hujjah) only the infidels were slayed after the ultimatum.
Edited by: junaidj on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 2:51 AM
One thiing to add. Do you think the test or "reminder of death" for human being is not complete without such earthquake as already people see death closely between relatives or friends etc.
Also when we say that such things like earthquakes, flood and other "natural" disasterss are necessary for the test of human being, wont that bring the feeling in our hearts that no matter what we do to protect ourselves we will be overcomed anyway.Imagine you are a teacher in a class with you students trying to make them behave and not hurt each other and then comes a thunder taking the life of two students and no matter how hard you try the thunder will come once a week to take the life of two students.will you still try to protect yourselves? will you still care much about getting your students not doing the slight hurt to each other? will you not get the feeling that you are fighting nature? in other words, when the siaster coming from nature becomes as terrible as that coming from people or even greater the idea that evil comes from ourselves might be lost and the bad things people do maybe forgotten while facing the greater challenges coming from nature.
Those just flood of thouths and I know sometimes I repeat myself in a bad way.
Hope it wont bore anyone :)
I will read more about this insh'Allah |
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Junaidj
CANADA
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Posted - Wednesday, January 5, 2005 - 7:52 PM
>>Those examples are better understood through the concept of "free will"
Fair enough!
>>Does "outcome of nature" make God not responsible of it? He created nature and those earthquake were there on earth maybe even before our coming.
Yes. That is why he states, that he will test some with loss of life, some with lack of wealth,....but give glad tidings to the patient, for He is with the patient.
Why does he create the retarded, the deformed, why does he exalt some but denigrate others?
All the above are part of his grand scheme. He is testing us all in our different situations.
>>Why is it exclusive to the age of prophet? does it mean that itmamul hujjaj is not attainable after the prophet age?
Yes, because only a Prophet can clearly preach the message of God. Only when a Prophet who is sent to clearly warn people is rejected that Divine scourge comes into effect.
>>Do you think the test or "reminder of death" for human being is not complete without such earthquake as already people see death closely between relatives or friends etc.
Different tests for different people, some are harder than others. The Almighty likes variety, what can I say?
>>that such things like earthquakes, flood and other "natural" disasterss are necessary for the test of human being,
I will change 'necessary' to 'one kind of test'.
>>wont that bring the feeling in our hearts that no matter what we do to protect ourselves we will be overcomed anyway......will you still try to protect yourselves?
Yes, because God indicates that life is sacred. And according to my belief, all of faith is about getting up and starting again.
Same for when a person sins. None is perfect. You sin, but amend, sin again, and amend again. That is life.
Likewise, when one loses a loved one, say a parent, one grieves, but then moves on after that. And one still protects what is left after them i.e. children, siblings and what not.
Keep engaged. I will try to the best of my abilities to assist you in any manner possible. |
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Desert_Son
EGYPT
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Posted - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - 1:25 AM
One thing at the moment:
quote:
>>Why is it exclusive to the age of prophet? does it mean that itmamul hujjaj is not attainable after the prophet age?
Yes, because only a Prophet can clearly preach the message of God. Only when a Prophet who is sent to clearly warn people is rejected that Divine scourge comes into effect.
How do you define Itmamul Hujjah? Is it knowing the ultimate truth about all things or just anything? Like knowing for sure that murder or rape or abuse is wrong, will that count as coming to itmamul Hujjah in a particular subject?
Thank you for your help :) |
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Junaidj
CANADA
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Posted - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - 1:50 AM
>> How do you define Itmamul Hujjah?
Please browse renaissnace.com.pk and our sister websites for the excat definition.
What I can recall is that the Prophet comes to preach God's message. It is only he under the direction of God, who is able to guage whether the people are rejecting the message owing to inability to understand or owing to stubborn attitudes and heedlessness.
The message is not the ultimate truth, in my opinion, just what is presented to the people by the Prophet. No one is expected to know the ultimate truth of everything, but the basic truths as preached by the Prophets, i.e. issues of adultery, thievery, justice, charity, teh correct belief set etc.
>>Like knowing for sure that murder or rape or abuse is wrong, will that count as coming to itmamul Hujjah in a particular subject?
In my opinion, clear cut issues like murder, rape fall under the knowledge that man knows without doubt except for those who are psychologically ill. That is why the punishment of murder is death.
However, having said that, these are still not cases which incur Divine scourge. Divine scourge occurs when people reject the Prophet (who is unable to attain authority). The Prophet has to preach and then give warning of the scourge.
In case of Tsunami, there was no Prophet and no warning beforehand, therefore not a case of Divine scourge.
Also note that other places like Amsterdam, San Fransisco, coastline of Brazil are safe, is it that they are innocent whereas the Muslims of Indonesia are not? I think not! |
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Junaidj
CANADA
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Posted - Thursday, January 6, 2005 - 5:39 AM
It cannot be termed as Divine scourge for several reasons.
1) In all cases of Divine scourge, the Prophet sounds the warning first. In this case there was obviously no prophet and no warning either.
2) The Muslims of Indonesia have the correct belief set, which is very important. Is it that they are more vile than the libertarians of Amsterdam and San Fransisco, I think not!
3) If we started terming such calamities as Divine scourge, then perhaps we should start including all accidents under this category, including war.
After all the Koran speaks of subjugation of nations by other evil nations. Will we consider Hitler as God's scourge on the European Jews. I think not!
Because how can we have the concept of punishment of son (European Jews) for the sins of the father (Jews at time of Moses/Muhammad (pbuh). This idea reeks of the concept of original sin, which is alien to Islam.
4) By the same argument Palestinians would be considered as punished for their sins. Does this not sound a bell?
5) Anyone who believes that this was God's scourge believes in a capricious and sadist and unjust God (because there was no warning to those who believe in One God and Islam, and that sex traders - the real villians are trying to thrive on orphans owing to the tragedy).
Thus anyone believing in such a theory, believes in an unjust God, which I would consider as BLASPHEMY! |
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