Alhumdulilah and the Wrath of God.

My first few miles hitching in a Muslim country in 1964, brought us to an ugly traffic accident. I was somewhat shocked that everyone was standing around laughing. When back in the car with my hosts, a doctor and his wife, I asked about the laughing. They explained that it was the will of Allah, alhumdulilah, and therefore everything was fine. This scenario was often repeated throughout several years of travel from Morrocco to Indonesia. Grief was relatively rare. I fear that if the driver of the car had been a jew they would have been dismembered on the spot even then.

When I now look for definitions of alhumdulilah I find "Praise be to Allah." Essentially the same definition...but different. Now misfortune is no longer Allah's will but always the fault of some other non-Islamic culture. If someone is a true believer are not all misfortunes the will of Allah? Are not infidel's bombs the wrath of God? When Muslim brutalizes other Muslims, is that not also Alhumdulilah? If one is a true believer how can they have it both ways?

If one is a true believer, is it not God's will for the for the Israeli's to win challenge after challenge for close to a century? When Rifaat Assad killed 20-60,000 of his own people in Hama, Syria in 1982, that too must have been God's will and worthy of celebration. And yet no one celebrates. It is so confusing.

When a Jew dies it is Allah's will. When a Muslim dies it must also be the will of God. Then why do Muslims always threaten retibution on a mass scale for something which was clearly God's will? Maybe they are not true believer's after all. They hide behind their book for all good and all evil they do to others....and each other but their book doesn't know how to handle strategic withdrawal.

We all know that the huge Saud royal family own a vast amount of Arabia's wealth. They are the ones blessed by Allah are they not? Any other explanation must be blasphemy. Alhamdulilah.