Natural disasters: who’s the Culprit?
Mount Ararat where it is said the Ark of Nuh (peace be upon him) came to a halt. Also known in the Quran as al-Judiyy.
Nuh (peace be upon him) was a prophet sent to a community of obstinate pagans.
He called them to Allah for an exhaustive 950 years (29:14), without retiring or resigning (as I would have), since that was not an option. He called them in public at community events, at their temples, and came to their homes to speak with them privately, but after 950 years of his mission, there was little to show for his prophetic work. He knew it was over when he saw the same disbelief he denounced night and day being passed down to the next generation like a heirloom in the family.
Once, a pagan who grew up before Nuh (peace be upon him) and who now had a child of his own, held his little boy by the finger and brought him to Nuh (peace be upon him).
Pointing at the great Prophet, he says, “Beware of this guy, don’t let him deceive you,” and then, “I remember my father bringing me to him when I was your age. He also warned me as I warn you now.”[1]
It dawned on Nuh (peace be upon him) that it didn’t matter how hard he worked on these people, kufr will always flow in their blood.
This community was a lost cause.
This is how he put it, “If you leave them, they will mislead Your servants and not beget except [every] wicked one and [confirmed] disbeliever” (71:27).
But then the drought hit. No rain for months and months and now the naysayers are standing on the brink of famine. The wells have dried up, the crops have shrunk and yellowed, and thirst has parched their mouths driving them mad.
Nuh (peace be upon him) sees his opportunity. He advises them like a father, ‘look, if you turn to Allah and make istighfar for your past sins, change will happen and, “He will send [rain from the sky upon you in [continuing] showers and give you increase in wealth and children and provide for you gardens and provide for you rivers’” (7:11-12).
Nuh (peace be upon him) was expounding cause and effect and laid it in deep that cause and effect is not all tangible. Your good deeds could milk rain from the skies and your istighfar could open the sluicegate of plentiful water.
They told him to cut out the nonsense. Precipitation comes from the clouds!
Istighfar is free
It is quite astounding why the community of Nuh (peace be upon him) did not take up his offer. What did they have to lose?
What we need to understand is that disbelief is not so pragmatic; it is blind faith. Even with the pagans’ backs to the corner (how else were they planning on pulling water from the clouds), they refused to accept his offer and said, “What in the heck do good deeds have to do with drought and famine.”
The big conflict
The big conflict between Creator-worship and creation-worship is the issue of cause-and-effect. The believer believes that Allah is the Musabbib al-asbab or the Cause of all causes, while creation-worshippers cannot wrap their heads around any cause beyond the observable realm of this world.
Be it the nation of Nuh (peace be upon him), the pagans of Quraysh, or the atheists of our time, they all hold the same nihilist creed: There is not but our worldly life; we die and live, and nothing destroys us except time…they are only assuming (45:24). Because of their blind faith in the immediate and tangible, life holds no greater meaning to them.
This is why dunya is called dunya in the Quran. It means the immediate, the thing that is in close physical proximity; and that is its greatest deception.
Response of Quraysh, no different
When the Prophet (peace be upon him) informed the pagan Quraysh about his overnight miraculous trip to Masjid Aqsa, the pagans of Nuh’s nation and the evolutionary scientists were all there, represented by the pagans of Quraysh.
The news hit them right in the gut.
As predicted, Quraysh clapped and jeered at the Prophet (peace be upon him). Some held their heads in quiet disbelief. [2]
Masjid Aqsa in Jerusalem, Palestine.
Has Muhammad gone insane?
Is he kidding?
They were so sure he was delusioned and that everyone would see it the same way that they came to Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him), the most fervent proponent of Islam, and laid it out in front of him. They thought they would win him over to their side. Instead, he told them he didn’t find it hard to believe at all, and was thereafter crowned the title al-Siddique.[3]
Once, Ubay bin Khalf, a pagan, came to the Prophet (peace be upon him) carrying a bone in his hand. He crushed it to pieces, threw it to the wind and said, “So, Muhammad, you say that Allah will resurrect this bone?”
The Prophet (peace be upon him) replied, “He will give you death, then resurrect you, and then gather you in the Hellfire.”[4]
Nation of Nuh (peace be upon him) still lives in our midst
The saga repeats itself today as droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, and other natural disasters strike with increased frequency and intensity in our modern world.
We say that Allah is displeased. We need to turn to Him and make istighfar. “But it has nothing to do with deeds or immorality in the world,” the atheist and evolutionary scientist argue back.
The blame all goes to population growth and climate change (which honestly is a major step in the right direction from an Islamic perspective. At least they have come to realize that the natural disasters are to some extent human-caused [since climate change and population growth are perpetuated by humans] just as Islam has been saying from the very onset, “Calamities have appeared on land and sea because of what the hands of the people have earned” (30:41).
Though a baby step in the right direction, the leap of faith the atheist community needs to make to arrive at the Quranic truth may never happen since their faith in the physical world is blind).
The meaning of Musabbib al-asbab
Let us make a few things clear here. We call Allah Musabbib al-asbab. This attribute incorporates the belief that superficial causes may underlie a pattern of events. We do not deny the possibility of climate change or other scientific reasonings being auxiliary causes for the rise in natural disasters. But to say that these non-intelligent causes are in themselves randomly and involuntarily creating events is unacceptable.
It is deifying inanimate, unintelligent beings. The nations of past prophets deified stone idols; the scientists deify elemental causes of nature.
What’s the difference?
Well, the only difference in my estimation is that the pagans ascribe divine attributes to the idols with veneration while the evolutionary scientists ascribe divine attributes to random, unintelligent causes without veneration, which is not, by the way, a condition for shirk.
Shirk is to partner any creation with Allah by ascribing divine attributes to it—with or without veneration.
An illustrative example of super unintelligent (i.e., stupid) random beings coming together to create this randomly perfect design.
Taking advantage of the complexity of science
Here, is the second matter of some gravity (pun intended).
Science is complex and most of us are not scientifically literate enough to question the data that is presented to substantiate research because we don’t want to appear illiterate and stupid. Instead, we trust in the scientists and assume they know what they are talking about. And yet, this is very much against the fundamentals of science itself.
Skepticism is the very base that fuels scientific discovery. If scientists don’t question and believe whatever they are told, they would never discover anything new. All the laws of science we studied at school started with a question and some critical thinking.
But when it comes to the data-ridden findings of scientists, we must not dare question or be critical for fear of being labeled. Or maybe, due to the complexity of science, we refuse to be skeptical about how they reached their findings and conducted their research because we feel it will fly over our heads.
Brothers, put aside your vanity. Be dogged for answers and don’t be afraid to ask the most elementary of questions. Somewhere down the line, you will find the radioactive seepage that contaminated the research. It may be the evolutionary creed, an agenda, maybe funding, or a bias. Who knows.
Here is why.
Science is objective, the scientist is not
The world of natural science is objective and indiscriminate. Whether you are a Muslim, Christian, or evolutionist, when you conduct the exact same research using the exact same model, you will arrive at the exact same findings because science does not discriminate against the Muslim in favor of the evolutionist or vice versa.
It is what it is.
The problem is that where science is objective, scientists are not. What model they use to conduct the research, the processes they formulate, the behind-the-scene funders of the project, the agenda driving it, and the creedal worldview of the evolutionary scientist will sully the final results.
As an example of how agendas contaminate findings, Peter Daempfle in his book Good Science, Bad Science, Pseudoscience, and Just Plain Bunk cites a report that came out in 2011 showing that people who have more Facebook friends have better developed regions of the brain.
He goes on to say, “Reporting the kinds of relationship interpretations in the above example of Facebook-related brain development may show both political and economic agendas- a kind of groupthink-to save the U.S. economy. If the public accepts that Facebook is good for it, then the part of our gross domestic product (GDP) dedicated to internet commerce and media exposure online will strengthen.”[5]
In his book, Peter Daempfle, a PH.D in science education, teaches us how to be more scientific and encourages critical thinking to screen research findings.
In other words, think for yourself and be a critical thinker.
As I started my own research into why natural disasters were increasing, you know what I learned?
They aren’t.
The restriction of cause and effect to the tangible is not science, but a bias.
At least one member of the scientific community told me that it is all in my head because I have a psychological issue called recency bias.
Firstly, I find it insulting to be told that I am biased, and then to fill me with self-doubt about my own observations about the rise in natural disasters while simultaneously declaring yourself the unquestioned authorities of how to interpret world events and shape my reality is quite the scientific hubris. I think there is a general, loose consensus in the masses and population that natural disasters are increasing.[6]
And just to be more scientific about it, the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) agrees.[7]
But let us be fair and hear the argument about my and your ‘biases’. The issue is that scientists are measuring seismic and volcanic activity in a longer timeframe and not by the average human lifespan.
Brothers and sisters, its climate change all at once
They are studying the rate of disasters from, say, a thousand years back to measure if the frequency has increased.
We have recency bias because we are basing our observations on the average human lifespan. As the author concludes, “Rates of volcanism can change, but on much longer timescales than a human lifespan, so don't fall prey to those who want to make the world seem more chaotic and dangerous than it is.”[8]
I must entrust myself to evolutionary science to believe that, indeed, the number of natural disasters a millennia ago was at the same frequency as it is today.
But I am skeptical. Even if all the data is presented, I would like to know how it was collected, what models were used to conduct the research, and how much of your nihilist worldview pervades the findings of the research. But let us say that I have blind faith in your filtered results, and all that you say is true, I am still left wondering why you conducted your research in this way.
Did you design this study within a larger timeframe to downplay the premonitions we seem to get that something bigger is on the horizon? Is it to create a groupthink that everything is okay so that the populations don’t start flipping?
As the average dude on the street, I couldn’t care less how many disasters happened in 1556. What exasperates me is that even my grandfather is saying that it wasn’t like this in his time. My father is saying the same. I am saying what I recall from my childhood. It wasn’t this bad. Nature is misbehaving now in a way it never did before within our lifespans. The number of disasters and storms in the mummies era comparatively does not concern me whatsoever.
I’ll let King Tut worry about that.
Why are scientists building a prehistoric timeframe to conduct this study that creates an illusory consolation and trivializes the rise in disasters happening now when the WMO says, “The number of disasters has increased by a factor of five over the 50-year period, driven by climate change, more extreme weather and improved reporting.” Other independent organizations and news outlets are shouting out much the same.[9]
How much is the institutionalization of evolutionary bigotry in the scientific community forming their methodology to design the huge timeframe process and distort basic observations?
Race science
We tend to believe, or rather would like to believe, that scientific research is always empirical facts that bypasses the ethnic, racial, religious, spiritual, political and economic lines that intersect our lives in so many respects. Scientists are married to the world like we are and they too cross that same busy intersection like everyone else. Expediency to achieve repute, wealth, academic excellence, promote personal biases, support government agendas prevail as much in the scientific community as any other.
Never heard of race science?
Entrance to the Human Zoo just outside of Paris, France.
It first evolved in the colonial era not too long ago when the European powers had colonized much of the world. Soon, they came to view themselves as the captains at the helm of humanity that would navigate the future of the human race. The spirit of that colonial era defined the science, which we now label race science.
An example of race science
The French colonists thought it a cool idea to ship indigenous peoples from their colonies, who were caged upon arrival and then exhibited in ‘living villages’ for public viewing and expositions. They became the human version of animal zoos. Whenever a new shipment came in, ads were placed in newspapers and millions came to watch the spectacle. They viewed them like objects, and even threw food to them.
Scientists were on site to study this new human project and to classify them into subgroups of the human species. The scientist Georges Cuvier, a pioneer in comparative anatomy, was obsessed with a pressing question: what made these colored peoples different from his race. He used these unwilling volunteers to experiment and form his scientific hypotheses. He removed the brain and genitals of one Saartjie Baartman after she died, and “presented them in jars to the French Academy of sciences.”[10]
Her remains were returned in 1982 upon the request of Nelson Mandela.
Cuvier’s student Louis Agassiz, a Swiss naturalist, moved to the U.S. and argued against blacks being treated the same as whites for scientific reasons. At the British Association for the Advancement of Science, an American slave owner, Charles Caldwell, claimed that Africans bore a greater resemblance to apes than humans.
The American physician, Josiah Clark Nott and Egyptologist, George Gliddon, also pushed the same agenda of race science to prove that Africans were inferior.
They did nothing wrong by their time. That was mainstream science, and it was not disproven or condemned until after the colonial era came to an unremarkable end.
Angela Saini in her book, Superior, quotes the anthropologist, Jonathan Marks, who defined race science as a science that emerged, “in the context of colonial political ideologies of oppression and exploitation. It was a need to classify people, make them as homogenous as possible.” She adds, “Grouping people made it easier to control them.” [11]
The birth of evolutionary science
A page from the Kitab al-Manazir of Ibn al-Haytham. The original manuscript is located in the Ayasofya (Istanbul, Turkey).
Evolutionary science emerged in the context of godlessness, anti-tauhid sentiment, elitism, capitalism, so many more nasty -isms, and greed and amorality. Why would the research not be as prejudiced in favor of the godless era just as its predecessor, race science, was for the colonial era, and how can it ever be equated with bona fide science? Why would it not patronize an agenda that promotes godlessness and immorality and why would such scientism not formulate processes that produce a desired result conforming to a nihilistic worldview?
Why should I believe that the scope of cause and effect is narrowed to the observable because the evolutionary scientist says so?
I accept his authority to the extent of his expertise in a scientific domain, but that doesn’t mean I must toe the line of his evolutionary worldview.
It is his professional responsibility as a believer in science to not interpret any finding according to creedal bias.
Remember, Ibn Haytham, considered the first true scientist by many is the father of the principle that is applied in all modern scientific research. He is the first to introduce the theory of direct observation to ascertain the reality of a studied object. Though, a Muslim from the Asha‘ri school of thought, his theory was never challenged by anyone in the Muslim community as blasphemous to belief in God.
He also didn’t mean to say that cause and effect was limited to direct observation, otherwise, it would be in conflict with his own belief.
That was an interpolation added on in the godless era by evolutionary science.
We may conclude on that basis that restriction of cause and effect to the observable is not science, but a bias that was formed by a godless, hedonistic era.
True cause of rise in natural
disasters
Now, returning to the research conducted by WMO, which studied the rise of natural disasters (may I add) in our lifespan, we are being warned that the storms and disasters are only going to increase with time. They also suggest the probable cause: climate change (as always).
The Prophet (peace be upon him) already predicted the rise of natural disasters in Bukhari and other hadith collections (which I will not cite for brevity), but he also informed us of the unseen cause— and its not climate change.
He said, “Never will lewdness spread in a people who are open about it but such diseases and illnesses will spread in them like never before seen in their forefathers; and they will not practice dishonesty in transactions but they will be struck by droughts, economic recession, and tyranny of a despot over them; they will not pay their zakat but the rain will be held back from them, and if it weren’t for livestock, rain would never fall; and they would not violate the covenant of Allah and His Prophet (peace be upon him) [to obey and follow] but Allah will enable their enemies to overpower them who will steal some of what they have (resources); and for as long as their leaders do not judge by the book of Allah and choose according to the revelation, but Allah will cause internal conflict within them.”[12]
Regardless of the fact that this hadith addresses the believers, the point is that the causes cited in the hadith can only be known through revelation.
Now, does this mean we sit back and relax on the controversy of climate change?
Of course not.
In the hadith, the Prophet (peace be upon him) does not negate superficial causes for natural disasters and diseases. If anything, they help guide us to the causes cited in the hadith.
Climate change is a lot about the greed of Big Oil, but also about our own dirty habit of overconsumption (at least in the West). According to the Friends of Earth website, “Overconsumption worsens climate breakdown and increases air pollution. It exhausts the planet's life support systems like the ones that provide us with fresh water, and leaves us short of materials critical to our health and quality of life. ”
Overconsumption and greed are two of the many causes of climate change embodied in the capitalist system, but they also are tied to the hidden causes cited in the hadith.
If we work on both, we can eliminate the very root of this rise of natural disasters in our world.
[1] Tafseer Tabari, 23/631
[2] Tafseer al-Maz-hari, 5/401
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibn Katheer, 6/593
[5] Daempfle, P. (2013). Good Science, Bad Science, Pesudoscience, and Just Plain Bunk. U.K.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. p. 28
[6] https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/56752538 | https://time.com/5300004/guatemala-fuego-volcano-eruption-indonesia-hawaii/
[7] https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-related-disasters-increase-over-past-50-years-causing-more-damage-fewer
[8] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/is-volcanic-activity-increasing-across-the-globe-no-but-your-brain-thinks-so
[9] https://www.visionofhumanity.org/global-number-of-natural-disasters-increases-ten-times/
[10] Saini, A. (2019). Superior. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibn Maja, al-‘Uqubat, 2/1332
