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You were minding your own business, studying, working, taking care of your family until one day, a natural disaster struck.
Your life, as you know it, turns upside down; you lose your family, your home, your job and practically everything you have.
Then, you look for something to blame or take solace for the misfortune and almost always, it would be the God of the religion you belong to.
In the face of natural disasters which cause massive human crisis, religions and rites somehow become irrelevant especially when mass deaths occur.
Every religion has its distinct burial rites -- Hindus cremate the bodies of the dead while in Islam and Christianity, the dead are buried.
But, when a country or a person is up against dead people everywhere in public places who have been killed by an earthquake or a tsunami and whatnot and it becomes a health threat to those who survived the event, is it possible for emergency humanitarian workers to determine the religion of each of the dead?
Ok, this corpse is Hindu, burn it.
This one is Catholic, bury it.
Oh, this one is Muslim, bury it and make sure it gets its Yassin recital.
Note the usage of 'it' and 'its.' After death one is considered as a body, not a human and when mass deaths due to natural debacles happen, the value decreases even more so as other overriding issues assume priority.
So, religious dogma becomes something totally not considered in such a scenario of great human loss.
In Malaysia, an Islamic country, where Muslims are prohibited to convert to other religions, a Hindu family didn't get to cremate one of their dead family member who supposedly converted to Islam when he was living and the Malaysian Department of Islamic Development confiscated the body and it was buried in an Islam burial ground, the Islamic way.
The reclamation above is not possible to be carried out in any natural calamity ravaged zone.
The practical thing to do is bury the dead in mass graves to make way to the living, as seen in the 2004 tsunami and this recent typhoon Haiyan that ripped through central Philippines. No ceremony, not even a Rest In Peace citing simply because there is no time and scope as well as mental state to do so. Practicality, urgency and common sense overshadow religions and even God.
Religious rites and gods are the last things on the humanitarian workers' minds as they go about their rescue and recovery missions.
After every natural disaster, people offer prayers and with the advent of tech, Facebook and other social networks, they have practically become a hive for prayers for the victims of a natural catastrophe.
I don't understand how prayers will help the victims of an earthquake or a tsunami or a typhoon.
What the victims really need are shelter, food, water, medical supplies and care and money to come out from their ordeal, not prayers.
No amount of prayers would fill hungry tummies, quench thirst, bandage wounds, set up shelters and amenities, take victims to a safe place, comfort terrified children and assist a mother to give birth to her baby.
No, prayers don't do all that; human action does. All the aid and rescue and relief crew, military, police and navy personnel work day in and day out to help the people to move on from a disaster perhaps God brought about rather than air pressure, seismic activity, tectonic faultlines and global warming. Above it all, 'God loves us.'
So, don't pray for the victims of the terrifying, deadly typhoon Haiyan. They need your contribution in an extant, touchable, usable form. A small donation of $10 would make all the positive difference in their bid to continue living. Your $10 might feed 3 hungry children. That is far, far, far more helpful than your prayer.
The peace and solace one may find during and after a disaster of the scale of typhoon Haiyan cannot be nothing more than an illusion.
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