See You Next Month, Insha Allah

The March earthquake and tsunami in Japan killed thousands, and only time will tell how many will suffer and die due to the ongoing nuclear disaster. In recent history, there have been so many earthquakes, floods, and manmade disasters affecting the entire world in one way or the other. All things being equal, I feel rather fortunate to be alive.

We are told in the Quran that we will be tested, and the Japanese have been run through the wringer. They have by all accounts been graceful, good citizens, and there are no braver folk than the ones working to keep the nuclear disaster within the zone of least possible harm. Most of us can take a lesson in stoicism, if not wisdom, from the Japanese woman currently living in a homeless shelter because, even though she has grown children, she does not want to burden them with her needs.
For all the acts of bravery, selflessness, survival and death, a Muslim has to hope that the brave Japanese, and all victims of disaster, have a spiritual back-up plan. We all will die sooner or later.

(Even if science suggests that cryonics is a viable bridge between today and future life extension, a corpse has no control over his environment and no guarantee of physical safety. Consider the claim of author Larry Johnson, a former executive at cryonics storage facility in Arizona, that baseball great Ted Williams’ frozen head was used for batting practice by the facility’s employees.)

This week, the United States has been hit with a wall of tornadoes moving across the country from the Midwest to the East Coast. Many of those tornadoes landed in my neck of the woods, and on my birthday, no less. While I did make sure to spend time on the porch making dua in the beautiful storms, I considered that there would be a trailer park in danger somewhere (they always hit the trailer parks) and that some people would likely die in North Carolina and Virginia, as tornado victims had further west.

Relatively speaking, the storms and tornadoes resulted in few deaths, subhan Allah wa alhamdulillah. Trailers had indeed been hit, and a tornado touched down in downtown Raleigh. But a Lowes home improvement megastore was destroyed, and not one person within on this busy Saturday was killed.

While my beautiful little girl made sure her daddy bought flowers and planned cake and ice cream for me (but mostly for her), I contemplated the ayats from the Quran that state that no one knows when he will die or what the next day holds. Like countless times before, I have come to the same conclusion: we cannot know why Allah does what He does, we must simply roll with it. We are the Submitters, after all.