Last week, ten years after 8th October, 2005, Pakistan and its neighboring countries faced yet another intense earthquake. It has shaken everyone to core and unfortunately death toll is increasing with passing time. Intense weather and insufficient communication system are giving hard time to authorities in managing relief activities. The scale of damage is huge in backward areas like KPK and Hunza due to geological reasons, poor infrastructure and scarce resources. It was a horrible day for South Asia, calling for much-needed attention to climate variations triggering such frequent catastrophic events, and precautionary measures to deal with them effectively. But majority doesn't seem to care about it and here is the reason why I'm forced to say this.
The minute quack hit, my Facebook home page was hijacked by "born again" Muslims, all of them asking for "tauba" and "hidayat". They were warning other people to wake up and turn towards Allah before it's too late. They were sharing thoughts on how we had brought this on ourselves by forgetting our Creator. Seminaries had already declared it as a warning from God to us, sinners. While I've no problem with a sense of spirituality instilled into people by a threat, I'm amazed on the set of priorities. Not even a single person around me had talked about disaster management or anything alike. None of them had tried to highlight a logical reason involved, in fact everyone rushed to make an "Azab" out of it. I couldn't help but wonder how easy it is for people to sit in their safe houses that are strong and modern enough to resist these destructive jolts, and blame the victim. Yes, blame the victim. It's like advocating that although sufferers were poor and short of resources, their sins were abundant unlike ours so they got what they deserved-their houses ruined and loved ones dead. Contrarily, we were relatively naive plus rich and wise enough to live in secure places and built strong houses, so we got another chance. And that's why we are putting it to right use by displaying immediate repentance for our sins. Now, what should I call it? Ignorance or vanity? Lack of empathy probably. Yes, empathy doesn't come hard here but only if you make a tiny effort to think beyond the narrative society feeds you. Unfortunately, we are not programmed to do that. One moment something happens, in next we get ready to romanticize it in the name of religion, overlooking the fact that it might be an insult to sufferings of those helpless victims.
Our society has this pattern of blaming either our sinful ways or HAARP and Jews, for every flood, earth quack or natural calamity. Even an unusual wave of heat is proclaimed to be an outcome of our collective social debauchery. It's nothing more than a prime example of guilt clogged minds and a desperate attempt to deny responsibility. But attitude like this hampers real efforts, crucial for building a society, armed enough to fight with unpredicted circumstances. Resultantly, most damage comes to the less-privileged people who are unfortunate enough to have insufficient resources and poorly constructed houses. So, people need to stop, just stop propagating such ideas.
My point is that use this tragedy to refresh yourself spiritually, if that is all you want, but don't let this overshadow the real issue. Because, if you think it is a divine vengeance, you won't bother checking your technical mistakes and working on them. If you think it is only a warning from the Creator, you will never ask your authorities for disaster management beforehand or a better infrastructure. You will accept your fate and stay where you are- suffering, witnessing misery, blaming the victim or nature and moving on with your life after making a prayer of forgiveness and gratitude for another chance in life. Do, if it pleases you, but then don't get upset when I tell you nothing will change. Floods will keep coming, earth will keep jolting and disasters will continue inflicting us unless we stop bringing our sins into every climate change and use our energies to figure out underlying causes and devise viable solutions to cope-up with such threats.
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