IT FLOODS BECAUSE GOD IS ANGRY

Yes, Malaysia suffers floods. And the floods get worse every year. But is God punishing us for not implementing Hudud by flooding our land or is it because of over-logging and deforestation that turns hilly forests into barren land?

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Religionists believe that calamities and tragedies are God’s punishment on humankind. They believe that there is a God that monitors what we do and say and rewards and punishes us accordingly for our deeds.

I suppose that makes sense when bad people suffer a bad fate and good people enjoy a good fate. This would be God’s way of punishing sinners and criminals while rewarding those who do good deeds. But how do you explain it when it is the other way around?

Humankind has been at war since the days of Cane and Abel, at least this is what the Abrahamic faiths say. But in most of those wars, especially the major conflicts, innocent non-combatants such as women, children, old folks, etc., suffer more than the combatants themselves. Millions who play no part in the war die.

Politicians start wars. Innocent people are the victims of wars. And politicians seldom suffer the ravages of war, even those who commit war crimes.

And who determines what constitutes war crimes anyway, the victors or the vanquished? Britain bombed Berlin and many other cities and killed millions of civilians. America did the same to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But war crimes were only committed by Germany and Japan, not by Britain or America. And that is because Germany and Japan lost the war.

Hence is this God’s punishment? If so then why did God not punish the real criminals and spare the innocent, and not the other way around? Why would God punish those who did not sin but elevate those who have to positions of power, prestige and wealth?

Certainly those who believe in a God that rewards and punishes humans would speak in this way without attempting to answer the question of why God punishes the innocent and rewards the guilty. Those that do not believe in such doctrines but instead believe in the doctrine of karma would look at it from another angle.

Maybe it is not God’s doing at all but our own doing. Maybe this is what is meant by karma. When we choose the wrong leader and support this leader who wants to go to war with another nation then we suffer the karma of innocent people suffering more than those who are guilty of this war.

When we allow the government to rape the land and do not kick out that government after decades of raping the land we get floods and suffer because of it. That is karma — we suffer the result of our own action.

Yes, Malaysia suffers floods. And the floods get worse every year. But is God punishing us for not implementing Hudud by flooding our land or is it because of over-logging and deforestation that turns hilly forests into barren land?

I suspect God has no hand in this. I suspect God just sits back and watches us destroy the land. And then the land that we destroy hits back and we suffer floods because of it. It is not because we resist Hudud that we suffer floods. It is because we got rich by cutting down all our trees and now we get poor when our homes get flooded.

Such is the law of karma. You reap what you sow. And we reaped (or rather raped) the forests and now we sow the floods. And then we have the gall to blame God for this who never did a thing to us and we did it to ourselves.