How does a human being handle the trauma of having 15 or 18 relatives disappear? Or come to terms with being the only survivor of a large, warm family? No one to share the grief with, no one to provide comfort for the pain, no one to turn to, no one to rebuild with, no one to hope for a future with … no one.
As we all pray to God to give these men, women and children the patience to somehow bear their grief and to inspire them with the strength to renew their hopes, I can’t help wondering about the messages this tragedy brought with it.
I don’t believe that God “made” this happen in the context of “Why would God do this to so many innocent people?” but I do believe that whatever happens, happens with the Knowledge of God.
From the perspective of Islam, God set the workings of Nature in motion and He does not unnecessarily interfere with the system of cause and effect. That is why, for example, when an evil person murders an innocent child, we don’t ask “Why did God let this happen?” He didn’t. We let it happen as a society – by failing at some point along the way to preserve a sense of what is Right and Just.
Therefore, in the larger workings of His Plan, there is some lesson to be learnt about ourselves, some information to be gleaned from everything that happens, whether it is directly – as in the example above – or indirectly, as with natural disasters.
(Of course, one could argue that by interfering with the ecosystem in the first place, Man may be directly responsible for some of the tragedies we attribute to Nature. There is no guarantee that the nuclear experiments that are carried out beneath the earths surface do not somehow effect its behaviour.)
Personally, one of the aspects of the community left behind that saddens me is the number of the orphans and childless families. The faces of the hundreds of children on the television screen clearly reflect their yearning for some form of protection, strength and parental love.
Yet, for the rest of us the relationship between children (especially teens) and parents is one of the gravest concern. I’ve often wondered if by constantly categorising children as being in their Terrible Two’s and Rebellious Teens isn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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