Islamic articles on the Tsunami

Theological Lessons from the Sumatra Earthquake, by Abdul-Hakim Murad, at Mere Islam:

Part of the brilliance of the Qur’an is that it makes no compromises over God’s transcendence, as it battles against pagan and Christian attempts to ‘localise’ God; while at the same time it makes no compromises over the human requirement to worship Him. In the Qur’an, His transcendence is not in tension with His immanence. This is because the transcendence is true in an absolute sense, because His nature is transcendent. The Qur’an’s language about the immanent God (the God of tashbih) is true contingently, because human beings are contingent. Tawhid was identical in all prophetic teachings since the beginning of time; but the ways in which He is worshipped and spoken of familiarly may validly change. It is thus a fundamental Muslim belief that ‘He is not asked about what he does.’ (21:23) For to ask Him would be to impose upon him purely human conceptions of the meaning of His names.

Reflections on the Tsunami, by Zaid Shakir (at Lamppost Productions):

Only God could have ushered the awesome power unleashed by the earthquake that moved the island of Sumatra 100 feet, yet left it intact. Only God could have ushered the awesome power to send a wave of water, whose depth reached from the surface of the water to the ocean floor, thousands of miles across the ocean at speeds exceeding five hundred miles an hour. Only God could devise an “early warning system” which told myriad species of animals to flee to the safety of high ground. Only God.