Indonesia: ruminations on ruminations

I’m not sure if the sort of ruminations which have appeared since the past weekend’s earthquake / tsunami disaster appear after every such disaster. But the whole idea of “how God can allow such a thing” is something which has been periodically asked since the (European) middle ages, and is something Christians have trouble with and explain in rather round-about ways. For us Muslims, it’s not difficult at all.

Martin Kettle, in his piece How can religious people explain something like this? in yesterday’s Guardian, wrote that he asked the late Hugo Young, a Catholic, how his religion explained the Sept 11 disasters:

I’m afraid that’s an easy one, he replied.

We are all fallen beings, Hugo declared, and our life in this world is a vale of tears. So some human beings will always kill one another. The attack on New York should therefore be seen not as an act of God, but as an act of fallen humanity. Then he paused, and added: “But I admit I have much more difficulty with earthquakes.”

Well, I’m not sure why. While we Muslims don’t have a concept of original sin, either in terms of Adam (peace be upon him) sinning or of all of us inheriting his “sin”, we do believe that as a result of his succumbing to temptation, the human race were removed from the Garden and sent to toil on the Earth. The Earth is not meant to be a place of security for mankind. Any “security” is purely temporary, that is, it’s not secure at all.

Those living in places affected by this disaster no doubt are more aware of the fragility of both life itself and of life’s “securities” than those of us in the west. We may fear the outbreak of ebola, SARS, chicken flu or “the new flu”, but we do not think of whatever may affect us, as individuals, tomorrow. We also think we are secure from natural disasters here, but we’re not. Yes, the Boscastle floods, while they washed cars out into the sea, killed nobody, but does anyone remember Canvey Island or Lynmouth? Do you know why the Kobe earthquake in 1995 caused such devasation? I was at college with someone with relatives in that area, and he told me that this part of Japan “doesn’t have earthquakes”. Well, they know better now. South Carolina is not thought of as an earthquake zone either, but it had a big one in 1886.

People see such things and question the mercy of Allah. They forget that Allah Almighty is also the Almighty, and has Majestic attributes. He has the right to do such things as He wishes with His creation. This does not mean, however, that Mercy may not be manifested in such incidents. For example, this disaster hit three known conflict zones: Aceh, Sri Lanka and Somalia. It could well happen that the people responsible for all these conflicts might find it possible to put aside some of their differences (in a lot of cases, these differences are petty).

Of course, natural disasters are often exacerbated by human failings. Shoddy buildings are the usual reason, which was well-known as the cause of the huge numbers of fatalities in Izmit in 1999. As Abdul-Hakim Murad noted,

In Turkey itself, today, the newest structures have proved the most flimsy. The ancient buildings are generally safe and sound. The Orhan Ghazi mosque in Izmid, dating from the early fourteenth century, is apparently largely unscathed. The traditional wooden houses are virtually all safe, and those who lived in them are still alive. I was once myself in an earthquake in Turkey, just thirty miles from Izmit. But I was in an old Ottoman house: the house groaned and squeaked for a minute, but it was quite unharmed.

There is, then, a secular culprit. Or rather, a class of them. They are those Turkish city planners who, following the destruction of the Ottoman caliphate, insisted on changing the face of Turkey. Just as it was a criminal offence in Ataturk’s Turkey to wear a turban, so also the state insisted on the abandonment of traditional Turkish building methods. They had to be replaced by European, specifically German norms. Hence those rows of dismal, grey buildings in modern Turkish cities which have nothing to do with Turkey. Their spiritual and engineering roots are in Germany: and Germany is not in an earthquake zone.

David Aaronovitch, in a piece he wrote after the Bam quake last year, blamed traditional building methods for the heavy casualties. In fact, the old quarter of Bam was largely deserted; it had last been used as military quarters in the 1930s, and as a city long before that. Most of the cities of the Arab world (and the Muslim world generally) are in earthquake zones (Egypt and Morocco in particular), but they’ve stood for centuries. A well-built building can stand a quake which would fell a shoddy one; for example, the Dudley earthquake (5.0 on the Richter scale) in England killed nobody, despite being only slightly smaller than the San Giuliano quake in Italy (5.4), which destroyed a school and killed 26 young children.

This quake has caused vastly more shock than other disasters with similar damage and death tolls, no doubt because of its widespread impact: an earthquake in Indonesia leads to death and destruction all the way to Somalia. We should hesitate to think of this as a sign of the Hour; it is, after all, a normal hazard for this part of the world, which is notorious for cataclysmic seismic activity. The Tambora eruption on Sumbawa in 1815 killed more than 90,000 as a result of ash and lava falling on the surrounding lands, causing devastation to agriculture and also disease (source: BBC); it had a noticeable impact on the world’s climate over the next year. Islands which appear in chains, like Indonesia, the Philipines, New Zealand and Japan, are actually formed by plates pushing against each other.

So, as Muslims, we should take this disaster as a reminder to bring our own practice up to scratch, and to discharge our debts both to Allah and to other people. We should also, of course, do what we can to alleviate the suffering of those in the disaster area who have lost both family and livelihood. We’re not of those who waffle “where’s the mercy in this?” while doing nothing ourselves.