The devastating earthquake in Turkiye and Syria earlier this month has resulted in a great humanitarian catastrophe in the region, with thousands of lives being lost enmass, and millions facing acute crisis of existence with displacement-induced shortage of access to basic resources and services. Looking at the sheer scale of the human and material loss at the earthquake, the media and the experts agree that Turkiye is reeling under ‘the disaster of a century’.
And yet looking further around our small world, it appears as though destructive calamities are now a recurring phenomena, with different nations witnessing a range of extreme weather events such as floods, cyclones, droughts, land-sliding and earthquakes, etc. The outbreak of viruses and related public health emergencies are a major concern, long before Covid-19 struck the world with horrific consequences. All these are in addition to the several man-made disasters destroying societies around the world: consider the human cost and material devastation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and other violent ethnic/racist campaigns creating havoc in many lands.
Indeed,
humans can truly worship God, and make real progress in social life by relying
on the Divine principle of compassion and benevolence. Instead of abusing
God-gifted resources and faculties of the ‘self’, we ought to use the
opportunities to serve the interests of our common humanity and thereby
privilege the collective benefit in a spirit of solidarity and compassion for
all. Indeed, nations inherit Divine mercy and blessings when they follow the
correct and straight path of pure wisdom as taught by the Prophets and the
Elects.
A believer does not agree with the materialist view that God is indifferent to human destiny and social fortunes. On the other hand, to a believer, Allah (swt) is not only aware of even the whisperings of the human soul, but He also comes to the aid of the one who seeks and prays for His help and assistance in times of need. For a believer, God’s grace and blessings are available to everyone. At the same time, His punishment is also very severe, especially to those ignore Divine commands and promote disorder in society. All that is happening around us is a reflection of the Divine Signs and manifestations involving both Divine Grace and Divine Wrath.
Nations court disaster
and punishment as reward when they fail to respond to the Divine Elects-
especially when they ignore the forewarnings about the tentacles of evil. With human nature
susceptible to impulses and inclinations, man’s sense of reason and well being gets easily be swayed and turned upside down by the flood of the passions of the
‘self’. The diverse manifestations of the ‘national self’, especially its
aggrandisement in varying contexts, lead to injustice, social contestations and
group-conflicts. When the balance of a society is tilted in favour of the evil
inclinations of its elite classes (-consider corruption and cronyism), it is
only a matter of time when disasters lurking behind strike at the most
inconvenient of times. Before everything is lost forever and we are condemned as a people lost in the sands of time, human kind needs to wake from the brink
of impending disasters, and follow a course correction in favour of radical moderation.
Read the Extracts Below:
‘In a dream, I was
shown a long ditch running for miles, on the edge of which thousands of sheep
were laid out with their heads hanging over the edge of the ditch, so that when
they were slaughtered their blood would flow into the ditch. The rest of their
bodies were outside the ditch. The ditch ran east to west and the sheep had
been laid on the edge of the ditch from the south. Each sheep was attended by a
butcher and every butcher had a knife in his hand, which was placed at the neck
of the sheep. The butchers were looking towards the sky as if awaiting the
divine command.
I found myself walking
in the plain to the north and felt that the butchers were angels who were ready
to slaughter the sheep as soon as they received the command from above. I
approached them and recited the following verse of the Holy Qur’an:
That is [Arabic] Say to them: ‘What would my Lord care for you, were you not to worship Him and were you not to abide by His commandments.’
The moment I said this,
the angels understood that they had been granted permission, as if the words of
my mouth were a divine command. [The Promised Messiah (as) says: ‘It seems that
since a vicegerent of God is appointed from heaven, my reciting of the verse
was understood by the angels as a divine command, that is to say, the command
that they were waiting for was uttered through my mouth.’ [al-Badr, vol. 1, no. 12, January 16, 1903 p. 90]
Thereupon the angels
ran their knives through the necks of the sheep and the sheep began to flutter
in a painful manner. The angels severed all the arteries of the necks of the
sheep saying: What are you: nothing but refuse-eating sheep.
I interpreted this
dream to mean that there would be a severe epidemic and many will die of it on
account of their misdeeds. I related this dream to a large number of people of
whom many are still alive and can affirm it on oath.
The events transpired accordingly. A cholera epidemic broke out in the Punjab and other parts of India. In Amritsar and Lahore especially, the epidemic was so severe that hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. The loss of life was so widespread that corpses were carried on carts and it became difficult for the Muslims to arrange for funeral prayers.’ [Tiryaqul-Qulub, p. 60, Ruhani Khaza’in, vol. 15, p. 263–264].