In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

TSUNAMI – HUMAN DISASTER & THE ONLY CURE

[Shamim A Siddiqi, New York]

About a week is going to pass but an unending tale of human miseries and sufferings of unprecedented nature are pouring in. They are of different magnitude. What happened with children and womenfolk is extremely pathetic. Villages after villages, towns after town have been washed away totally, worst than the horrible scenes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki evaporated from the surface of the earth within twinkling of an eye when the stalwarts of modern civilization dropped the atom bomb on these bursting cities of Japan. The waves generated by the Tsunami earthquake created waves measuring power equal to about 9,500 atom bombs. What velocity and destructive might it carried in its march to destruction from Sumatra to the coast of Somalia. It played havoc in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and elsewhere on the coastal lines of the Indian Ocean belt.

In its wake the loss of human lives is tremendous but the human sufferings of those who have survived this onslaught of “Mother nature” are beyond description. Most of them have lost their dear and near ones. Hundreds and thousands have lost their entire families and are crying in utmost despair where to find them. Their empty life will never be again what it was before this calamity. Their lamentation is life long and the memories of this catastrophe will haunt their imagination till grave. Time will never be able to heal these wounds that have poisoned their life pattern for good.

The only remedy that fellow human beings could provide is the few words of sympathy that man can whisper in deep sorrow in their ears asking them to have patience. It was destined to happen so it happened. Man has no control over any of these happenings. They are just only silent spectators. The world at large must rush to their financial and moral help for their rehabilitation and relocation without any discrimination on account of color or religions and geographical bounds. They are all humans, must be treated like humans and be settled afresh within the soonest possible time like the single family of Adam and Eve. The suffering community of the affected region consists of all faiths and colors and must be attended as humans by all the faiths of the world. Muslims of the region and that of the world at large, equally, have great responsibility to share this burden of their sustenance at least for the next six months to one year when they may be able to stand on their own legs to bear the burnt of this historical mishap.

The human efforts must continue unabated to meet their immediate and future needs. The rich nations of the world have greater responsibility and they must come forward to help this suffering humanity with material and financial resources in terms of their resources and GRP. When Japan could offer 500 million dollars, the USA must come to help with at least a few billion dollars alone. Its offer of 350 million so far really looks like “peanuts”. A nation that could “waste” 200 Billions so far over the “meaningless” destructive war on Afghanistan and Iraq must show moral courage to bear the lion share of the burden of rehabilitation of the poor suffering masses of Indian Ocean. If not, history will recognize the presidency of Bush as the most “stingy” regime of the USA.

But the solace to these weeping hearts and tormented minds will come only from within through a self-oriented patience and repentance of what they were doing so far on the surface of this earth. They will have to realize that the world does not belong to them or to their forefathers. The world and what it contains belong to their Creator and Sustainer. They have to follow His directives as how to live, act and behave in this world. Human society is ignoring His authority continuously and calamities are “visiting” this world often and on when the quantum of our sins increases by leaps and bounds. Our misdeeds cover the mercy of God from showering over us. This curtain of our sins restricts the kindness of God to envelop us.

There was a great famine in Arabia at the time when Omar (RA) was the Caliph. Everyone was in trouble. People approached him to have special prayers [supplication] to God. He asked all the people to assemble in a field for a collective supplication. When they assembled, Omar asked them to repent and ask them to beg pardon from their God. They did. Then Omar returned to the city of Madinah. Before he could reach the outskirts of the city, rain started pouring in cats and dogs. He explained to the people that it were our sins that blocked the mercy of God. When we repented and sought His pardon, the clouds of sins were shattered and rain started pouring in.

This should be an eye-opening historical event both for the suffering humanity of Indian Oceana as well for the rest of mankind. Repentance of sins and turning back to our Creator and Sustainer is the key that will give solace to the Tsunami affected people of today as it relieved the Arabs from the sufferings of the great famine of that time.

Shamim Siddiqi

January 2. 2005