When the Deafening Blast comes, the Day a man will flee from his brother and his mother and his father, and his wife and his children: on that Day every man among them will have concerns enough of his own. (Surah 'Abasa: 33-37)
After an intense shake, the earth throws up all its treasures and discloses all its secrets, none of which will have any value at all from then on:
When the earth is convulsed with its quaking and the earth then shakes off its burdens and man asks, 'What does this mean?'-on that Day it will impart all its tidings because your Lord will have inspired it. (Surat az-Zalzalah: 1-5)
A terrifying noise followed by an intense tremor and sudden underground explosions ravage everything to which people formerly attached a great deal of importance. For instance, people treasured their houses, offices, cars and fields. Some people held a house to be the main target of their lives. Yet, the vanity of such goals surfaces at the very moment of the Day of Resurrection. Material wealth, to which people devoted all their lives, will disappear in a second. The goals of one who makes getting promoted in the company his main ambition become worthless. Another who devoted all his life to seizing power in his country experiences the same terrifying situation. He bitterly witnesses the disappearance of that country...Everything loses its significance...except everything done to earn God's approval. As God states in the Qur'an: "When the Great Calamity comes: that Day man will remember what he has striven for and the Blazing Fire will be displayed for all who can see." (Surat an-Nazi'at: 34-36)
A posting by someone on the Forum made me realise the most often felt disillusionment by all theists when faced with such questions as asked by this poster.
Those who suffered in this Tsunami recently and lost their lives, must have had feelings of the same type...except the children who were too young to comprehend.
Images of children dead bodies piled up in rows. Dead bodies piled up outside a mosque in Aceh and a Temple in Tamil Nadu. Christians dead while celebrating Christmas brought home the fact that none in this World can claim to be immune from collective death and destruction just on the basis of belonging to a particular caste or creed. A very profound lesson to learn there for the whole Humanity.
When a child is run over and killed by a drunk driver, the parents ask why it had to happen to them? They are not asking for an engineering analysis of masses, velocities, and forces. They are simply seeking moral answers.
I too searched for the answers.
This question leads us to examine our basic beliefs about the nature of the God that most humanity believe in, variously called Allah, God, the Trinity, and Jehovah. Most religions teach that God has a number of attributes. Among them are:
Omniscience: all-knowing, Omnipotence: all-powerful; Omnibeneficient: A loving deity, who cares for the world.
But when about 3,000 lives were snuffed out in New York, Washington, and a Pennsylvania field by attacks on 2001-SEP-11; this caused massive grief and pain to tens of thousands of spouses, partners, family members and friends. About 25,000 people a year are murdered in the U.S. About 2000 people murdered and raped in Gujrat, Around 30,000 perished in Iraq (100,000 unofficially) in the name of liberation and now another 70,000 in SE Asia Tsunami disaster. All of these events could be prevented, by an omnipotent, omniscient, caring God. It is these types of event that can cause some people to become mad at God and to lose their faith. But it drives even more people to examine their religious beliefs, and perhaps grow spiritually.
Christian Fundamentalist R. Albert Mohler, assigned full responsibility for 9-11attacks on the (then) unknown terrorists. He said: "We dare not dignify the murderers by explaining their cause. No cause, however righteous, can justify such acts. And, no righteous cause could produce such acts. He acknowledges that God is omnipotent -- infinitely powerful -- and thus could have prevented the tragedy. He however said: "This much we know—we cannot speak of God’s decree in a way that would imply Him to be the author of evil, and we cannot fall back to speak of His mere permission, as if this allows a denial of His sovereignty and active will."
Many consider these answers to be unsatisfactory. They yearn for a more complete understanding of the puzzle.
As a Muslim, I realise that death and destruction seen in recent years, all around is not the whole story. Besides all these negative things, we also see beauty, health, prosperity, life, birth, wisdom, intelligence, growth and progress. We also see goodness among people, faith, sincerity, charity, love and the spirit of sacrifice. We also see a lot of virtue and piety. It is wrong to see one side of the coin and not to see the other side. Any philosophy that concentrates on one aspect of the creation and denies or ignores the other side is partially true and partial truths are no truth at all.
It is also the fact that the element of good is more in the creation than the element of evil. We all see that there are more people who are healthy than those who are sick. There are more that eat well than those who starve.
There are more that lead decent life than those who commit crimes. Goodness is the rule and evil is the exception. Virtue is the norm and sin is the aberration. Generally trees bear fruits, the flowers bloom, the winds move smoothly.
The Best attempt to answer these questions, I found at this Link. I am at Peace now!
Why does God Allow Death and Destruction?
Not every Calamity is a punishment.
Hope you too benefit from this...InshAllah!
But nothing will ever make me feel happy about how we bungled as nation and yet again, proved ourselves to be inheritors of the Third World Legacy.
First tsunami alert lost in Indian bureaucracy
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