An Article Commenting on our Previous One Titled:  "Would Hurricanes Striking the USA Be Considered as Signs of the Divine Wrath?!"

Published in September 13, 2017

Translated by: Ahmed Fathy

Introduction:

 Our previous article titled "Would Hurricanes Striking the USA Be Considered as Signs of the Divine Wrath?!" (found in English on this link: http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=17202) has stirred debates and comments among Quranists. We copy below some of the comments that we have received.

Firstly: Mr. Muhammad Hassan: (This is a great article as typically expected from you, Dr. Mansour. Yet, you are an American citizen and thus you are biased for the USA. This hurricane made losses as much as the sums of money stolen by Donald Trump and his wife and daughter, especially the money that has come because of the law called JASTA about 9/11. The losses are as much as the sums of money received in return to arms and weapons sold by the USA to the KSA to kill my Yemeni brethren and to destroy Yemen, my native country. I sincerely hope the USA will lose more and more; this is for me, a Yemeni man, a sort of divine retribution, even if you think otherwise. I am glad that some Americans suffer some destruction, because it is undoubtedly the price paid for the destruction of Yemen. The USA assumes itself to be the heart of the planet and it schools other countries about human rights and democracy; yet, too much money, information, welfare, and IT make more wars to break out. I hope more hurricanes would strike other states inside the USA so that they may repent and stop destroying other countries. I am not an American citizen, and I have the right as a Yemeni citizen to feel happy because of the losses caused by the hurricane.).

Secondly: Dr. Othman Ali: (What is the guilt of the Caribbean area and Cuba, then, Mr. M. Hassan?! With due respect to you, I totally disagree with your viewpoint. It is very bad that a Quranist would feel schadenfreude. Politics and policies have nothing to do with natural disasters. The hurricane is NOT a sort of divine punishment to the USA. If I to follow your logic, what is the guilt/sin of the Bahamas, the Caribbean area, and Cuba that suffered losses because of the hurricane before the State of Florida?! In addition, Tsunami and earthquakes in Indonesia (a Muslim country) are natural disasters and never a sign of the wrath of God. Climate changes and global warming cause floods, hurricanes, high temperature degrees, etc. and may threaten the northern parts of the globe (Canada, North of Europe, and Russia) because the North Pole might be melting gradually. This threatens Mediterranean Sea countries, especially the coasts of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco. This is NEVER a sign of divine wrath or penalty at all. Please, sir, you as a Quranist must adhere to justice: "...let not the hatred of a certain people prevent you from acting justly. Adhere to justice, for that is nearer to piety; and fear God. God is informed of what you do." (5:8).).

Thirdly: Mr. Saeed Ali: (Intellectual void and ignorance of the Muhammadans: it is regretted that there are so many Arabs who are geniuses in fields like IT, medicine, engineering, sciences, etc. and yet, the same persons shut down their minds once they hear Azharite ignoramuses on pulpits of mosques who spread mythology! They would not dare to criticize the clergymen so as not to criticize religion! It is as if religion were embodied in certain persons! Sermonizers in the Arab world express gladness with the losses of the hurricane in the USA and feel happy because of the suffering of the victims! This is a very un-Islamic stance. The ignorant ones among the Muhammadans hate astronomy and engage into hot debates about the crescent of the fasting month of Ramadan! The same occurs about the beginning of the pilgrimage season! Natural disasters are faced with science and knowledge; Japan suffers earthquakes that reach 9 degrees on the Richter scale, and the victims are very few; the Japanese have prepared themselves by science to face any earthquakes; in contrast the earthquake that occurred in Cairo, Egypt, in 1992 reached 5.8 degrees on the Richter scale and lasted for 30 seconds, but 545 persons died under the debris and 50 thousand persons were rendered homeless! The earthquake in Iran in 2013 reached 7.8 degrees on the Richter scale and it resulted in countless victims. The Tsunami of Indonesia resulted in 230 thousand victims. It is very inhuman to feel glad with such misfortunes resulting from natural disasters! How come that heartless clergymen in mosques express such feelings of schadenfreude that show their ignorance and intellectual void?! How come university graduates would believe such nonsense?! The USA will manage to overcome such natural disaster because its citizens are free people who never accept tyranny.).

Fourthly: this is our reply to the above comments: A. S. Mansour writes: (Welcome our fellow Quranists, and we thank you for your comments. Let us assert the following points. Being an American citizen since 2014, an Egyptian citizen by birthright, and an Arabic-speaking man does not change our belonging to real Islam: the Quran: God's Word. This is God's religion that we adhere to and we hope to die for its sake. We defend wholeheartedly the weak ones on earth and we attack the unjust ones to defend those weak ones everywhere in all eras and in our era. There is no difference among the weak ones in Burma, Yemen, Florida, Cuba, Texas, Bosnia, Iraq, Syria, etc. The weak ones face tyrannical rulers and tyrannical natural disasters; this is our viewpoint as a Muslim thinker. As for our political point of view, we assert that the politicians of the USA are not necessarily representing American citizens. We have written before about lobbies that embody other internal powers like exporters of arms and weapons, and transportation companies as well as lobbies representing countries like the KSA, UAE, and Israel. These lobbies influence a great deal the American foreign policies, within transparency and open competition. This is why the errors and fatal mistakes of the American foreign policies are repeated more often than not, from Vietnam to Iraq. The worst and most dangerous lobbies are of those exporters of arms and weapons and those representing oil-rich countries. These lobbies are the direct cause of massacres committed in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and also in other Arab countries in the near future. We can blame the American foreign policies; this is already done within American media and movies that expose everything. More blame must be for Arab tyrannical rulers. The USA did not invent the Sunnite-Shiite conflict; it already exists before the USA was established; the USA is merely taking advantage of this conflict without interfering in it. in fact Arab dictators enlist American help and intervention! Thus, before we blame Bush, Obama, and Trump, we must blame more tyrants who rule Egypt, the KSA, Yemen, Sudan, and the Gulf monarchies.).

Fifthly:

We have received a dear Arab friend from a Gulf country as a visitor at our home yesterday, and after he read our article, he told us that he tends to think that the hurricane is God's punishment for the unprecedented level of sexual immorality in the USA. We have told him that sexual immorality is a human phenomenon in the past and present eras, even during the era of the four pre-Umayyad caliphs, as we have explained in our subtitled-into-English episodes of our YouTube show "Exposing Salafism". We have reminded this friend of ours that sexual immorality (of heterosexuals and homosexuals) increased during the Abbasid Era and even poets tackled this theme in a positive way as they take pride in their amorous conquests. We have reminded this friend of ours that sexual immorality (of heterosexuals and homosexuals) during the Mameluke Era became part of the Sufi religious sharia, as we have explained in our book on moral degeneration during the Mameluke Era in Egypt. Before the West would know about homosexuality, it was widespread in the Arab world since the Second Abbasid Era and later eras, even among clergymen. We have reminded this friend that when the clergyman Rifaa Al-Tahtawi traveled to France and lived there for a while, he wrote in his book titled "L'Or de Paris" that he expressed his surprise that homosexuality did not exist in France! Centuries before Al-Tahtawi was born, the Sufi religion in the Mameluke Era considered homosexuality as part of the acts of worship and religious rituals! When this was the state of affairs in the Mameluke Egypt, the USA was nonexistent at the time. Of course, sexual immorality (of heterosexuals and also gays and lesbians) is worse in the KSA and other Wahabi countries where women wear niqab (full veil), as the niqab is used to hide persons and cover up sexual immorality and crimes, as was the case during the Mameluke Era in Egypt. We have reminded his friend of our article about veils and niqabs, titled "They Ask you about the Veil" (found in English on this link: http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=5892 ). Of course, within niqabs of sham piety and within countless prohibitions imposed by religious police in the KSA, adultery and homosexual practices increase; this is very well-known now and we do not need to provide lines of evidence to support it. Sadly, this bad reputation (and the West knows of it) is very insulting to good, upright, and really pious people in the Gulf monarchies. The American society is open; sexual immorality is done there in the open and without hypocrisy. Society there allows boyfriend-girlfriend relations within social rules as part of individual and personal freedom, and Islam refuses all types of extramarital sexual relations. At the same type, American laws are against rape and sex for money (i.e., brothels). Thus, within such an open society, moral degeneration would not reach the highest degree or to the point of addiction or committing crimes; sexually permissive societies make sex boring and without intense pleasure to the body and to the soul as it is so easy to get. In contrast, within Arab societies of too many prohibitions and the atmosphere of bigotry and too many restrictions, people feel pleasure to commit adultery and other sexual immoralities, without getting bored however much they engage into illicit sex, while abandoning the legal sex (i.e., within wedlock). This is the case within the cursed KSA. Yet, sexual immorality and moral degeneration in the KSA do NOT lead to natural disasters. The divine penalty for sexual promiscuity is something individual there (and everywhere else) as so many diseases are caused by promiscuity: "And do not come near adultery. It is immoral, and an evil way." (17:32). This friend said to us that God has smitten the people of Lot because of their homosexuality. We agreed with him, and we have explained how this Quranic story proves our point; the hurricane in Florida is a natural disaster occurring many times in this part of the USA, whether it is populated or not. Those who reside there know this fact very well and deal with it within accumulated experiences. This is in contrast to divine punishment; it would occur without ordinary natural disasters at all. Our friend felt puzzled and we have explained to him that the ancient nations smitten by God as per the Quran did NOT live in areas and regions that were struck by natural disasters. Most of the Earth areas was not populated; these nations chose the best regions to live in them; e.g., the people if Noah were the only people on Earth at the antediluvian times. The people of Aad lived in the southern region of Arabia where heavy rain helped them to establish a great civilization, but they disbelieved in God Who granted them these bounties; their prophet, Hood, told them the following: "Do you build a monument on every height for vanity's sake? And you set up fortresses, hoping to live forever? And when you strike, you strike mercilessly? So fear God, and obey me. And reverence Him, who supplied you with everything you know. He supplied you with livestock and children. And gardens and springs. I fear for you the punishment of a Tremendous Day."" (26:128-135). This means they were very advanced at the time in building edifices and in factories, farms, military might, etc. with large population, and other tribes around them were not as much powerful, but were victims of the tyranny of the Aad tribe. God has taken revenge from the Aad tribe by sending to them destructive wind within a hurricane, not carrying clouds of heavy rain as they had expected, as they mocked Hood when he warned them against God's punishment: "Then, when they saw a cloud approaching their valley, they said, "This is a cloud that will bring us rain." "In fact, it is what you were impatient for: a wind in which is grievous suffering."" (46:24). We mean to assert here that the people of Aad did not live in a region that would be normally struck with natural disasters; rather, they lived in a comfortable region that made them establish unprecedented civilization at the time. This applies also to the people of Thamood who lived in Jordan and remnants of their civilization are carved in mountains there, and to the people of Lot who lived around the Dead Sea. These areas are not struck with natural disasters. Besides, God's punishment to each of these ancient people had smitten the disbelievers only among them, and not others around them, and God has saved their prophets and the believers with them, while torment and destruction befell the arrogant disbelievers only. This is the difference between natural disasters that harm everyone and God's punishment that destroys disbelievers only. God says in the Quran: "Then We save Our messengers and those who believe. It is binding on Us to save the believers." (10:103).             

Lastly:

1- This problem still lingers and persists.

2- Middle-Eastern tyrants are the main perpetrators in all crimes committed against Arab nations; Ali Abdullah Saleh does not differ from Mubarak, Al-Sisi, Saddam Hussein, Kaddafi, and Al-Saud royal family, and all of them within decades invented the myths of conspiracies of the West against Arabs so that fury of citizens is vented by expressing hatred toward the USA, the West in general, and Israel as 'enemies'. Reform is made to appear impossible until the USA and Israel are 'defeated' once and for all! On the margin of this Americanophobia, schadenfreude increases when typical natural disasters strike any region inside the USA.

3- This rejoicing at the misfortunes of others inside the USA spread in the countries of the Muhammadans despite the fact that victims in Florida have nothing to do with any events occurring in the Middle East and that ordinary people in the USA and in the West feel mental anguish for the victims and weak ones oppressed in the Middle East, sympathize with Syrian refugees and their likes, and readily donate money for victims of floods in Bangladesh and other countries and victims of earthquakes in the countries of the Muhammadans. 

4- Have you any sense of shame left, O people?!