I am disappointed that Muslim Link decided to give front page prominence to a khutbah which sends a message we don’t need. The thrust of the khutbah is that earthquakes (and, I suppose, disasters in general) are a punishment from Allah and we should mend our ways to prevent them from happening. Of course Allah has given us examples of how in human history He has caused disasters to overtake disobeying populations. He punishes whom He Wills and rewards whom He Wills. He is Allah. However, to imply that we as humans have the ability to determine whom Allah will punish or has punished because a specific disaster has struck them is arrogance, to put it mildly. From Indonesia to Haiti to Pakistan to Japan, how are we to determine what crimes people are being punished for? Are the people of California more sinful because California is more prone to earthquakes than the people of Ohio because Ohio is less prone to earthquakes?
What the recent earthquake does remind us of are two facts: one, that human life is fragile, so we should live our lives with full readiness to answer for our deeds; two, Allah has created a complex and mighty creation and we should live in it with humility and with respect for the physical world around us. To wed ourselves to the subtle message of this khutbah will lead us to shun our responsibility to ask the questions that we should really ask. Why is Haiti so poor and corrupt that shoddy construction caused such tremendous loss of life? How can technologically advanced Japan learn more to make its people safer?
Messages such as those embedded in this khutbah incline us to excuse the unresponsiveness and incapacity of those responsible for managing our affairs. Such messages ignore the fact that Allah has made nature subservient to man and that man has a God-given responsibility to continuously strive to manage it in a manner that benefits and not hurts humankind.
Iqbal Unus
Herndon, Virginia
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Assalamu’alykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh Brother Iqbal and thanks for your letter.
We re-read the piece after reading your letter. While the khutbah does say persistent sins and wrongdoing leads to punishment from Allah that could come in the form of earthquakes, hurricanes, etc, the imam also says earthquakes come as a sign for people of the power of Allah , and as a reminder of the Day of Judgment. We don’t think the message is that we can use earthquakes to ascertain the reason a particular natural disaster afflicted a particular people. All we know about the wisdom of what Allah does is in the Qur’an and Sunnah, and it is mostly general, and Allah Knows Best. – TML
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