Did you pray for AirAsia 8501? Your God is worse than you
Tragedy does this to people. Reason is the first casualty of a moment of loss. AirAsia Flight 8501 is lost forever. What has been found is the debris, floating in the turbulent Java sea. A terrible turbulence slapped it down on the face of the sea from 30,000 feet. Like in Anurag Kashyap's noir Ugly, in our search for QZ8501, we have uncovered the ugliness of our minds before stumbling upon what we began the search for.
23 people missed the flight. Ten of them were from one family. They cursed everyone around after they missed their flight to Singapore. A couple of moments later, they were thanking God for saving their lives. Clearly hinting that God believed that they were special people, while the other 155 passengers, including an infant among the 16 children on board, were considered fit for death by crash. By the man who runs the universe, but cannot save a plane from crashing. I call Him a man, because no woman would mess things up so bad and kill some children and save some others.
The moment the plane was lost, everyone from heads of states to the head of AirAsia, demanded prayers for the innocent lives in an Airbus 320 that had lost contact. There were people tweeting about how their prayers were with the people on board and their kin. Prayer is the tool of the helpless. It gives you a sense of having done something. It gives one solace, comfort in the inability to actually help. Some people resort to this even when they can actually help, just to pretend that they are helping.
The plane belonged to AirAsia Indonesia, an affiliate of AirAsia of Malaysia. Some Malaysians are going crazy asking: Is it a curse? They have lost an airplane and haven't found a clue in nine months. Another was shot down in a fight between Ukrainians and Russians. Now, this. An American Right preacher politician has already announced that these crashes were a result of God's wrath on people who sin and don't repent. He obviously thinks that the Christian God is a vengeful idiot, endowed with extraordinary powers to torture people to death.
Malaysia hasn't had a great year thus far. As we discuss the QZ8501 crash, the country is facing one of the worst flooding in recent times. Malaysian President Razzak was teeing off with US President Obama on a Hawaiian golf course, as Malaysians braved floods and scarcity of essentials. There is a limit, even to political insensitivity. Because this leads to MPs like Nik Mohamad Abdul Aziz posting on his Facebook timeline: "The floods remind Muslims to return to Allah and to avoid His wrath. It justifies the Kelantan government's steadfastness in implementing the hudud."
Insensitivity No 1: Razzak's golfing holiday when people are suffering. No 2: When people are suffering, MPs pushing their hudud agenda, instead of being of help. The word "hudud" means limits. These politicians want religious limitations on the conduct of the people and the state, or what's called Sharia, by proxy. They have been fighting for Sharia dressed as hudud for quite some time. But is it the time to rake this up?
Perak state mufti Tan Sri Harussani Zakaria blamed the aviation tragedy and floods on domestic political bickering. "Due to this incessant political fighting, we are being tested by Allah," he told AFP. Why would Allah test people by finishing off innocent passengers for the bickering among politicians? Wouldn't the Almighty finish off the politicians instead of people on their way to Singapore for celebrating New Year with family and friends?
If you had the power to save more than 200 people from a fire lit by you, would you save them from certain death? If your answer is yes, congratulations, you perform much better than God on the empathy scale. You are lovely, kind and caring. Unlike God. Nobody prays to you. They pray to God. God doesn't listen to their prayers.