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SMS Messages Link Quakes With Koran; Some Leaders Call Quake 'Warning' From God
Jakarta Globe | October 06, 2009

Residents perform Friday prayers outside a damaged mosque in Padang, West Sumatra, last week. (Photo: Herlambang, EPA) Residents perform Friday prayers outside a damaged mosque in Padang, West Sumatra, last week. (Photo: Herlambang, EPA)
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John Ralph
2:10pm Oct 8, 2009

To Simon you are 100% correct. I have also worked in Catholic countries where corruption is everywhere. I suppose I am tired of the pretenders, those who consider themselves superior to others because they think they are closer to God. Does not matter to me who they are. Religion is proving itself to be the cause not the answer. In Indonesia, well, who really cares.

Valkyrie
10:42am Oct 8, 2009

I am going to state a few controversial issues here.

In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people angry and have been widely regarded as a wrong move.

Corruption started right there when Adam tempted Eve. Judas sold his Master for 30 pieces of silver, and so on.

Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean is dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Having said the above, it is regrettable that moral values of many religions have failed to uphold this virtue and Simon is right.

We are all going through a very dangerous moment in time.


Simon
9:16am Oct 8, 2009

John Ralph, corruption is also a way of life in many non-Islamic nations. Think of Italy or South America. In fact there is a fairly good argument to be made that more devout a nation is, the more likely it is to be plagued by corruption, which rather undermines religion's claim to any moral superiority.

Valkyrie
7:20am Oct 8, 2009

Thanks John! Let me assure you that my question had no malice attached to it.

John Ralph
5:59pm Oct 7, 2009

To Valkyrie

I have 7 different English versions of the Koran. Given English is more precise than Bahasa, it is interesting to note the different so called interpretations of the Koran by translators. I also have the strict Saudi Arabian translation (official) which is different in many ways to the other 6 I have. Frankly I am disappointed with the Koran. But it does explain to some extent why corruption is a way of life in so called Muslim countries. That is what I was trying to understand.

Text messages have been circulating since last week linking the timing of Wednesday and Thursday's earthquakes in Sumatra with verses about immorality and punishment in the Koran, prompting some Islamic leaders to call the disaster a “warning” from God.

Two days after the earthquake shook West Sumatra, the Jakarta Globe received an anonymous text message.

“Padang’s earthquake happened at 17:16 and the aftershock happened at 17:58. The next day, there was an earthquake in Jambi at 8:52. Look at the Koran!” the text message stated.

The verses corresponding with the earthquake times reference “annihilating” towns where residents and leaders have acted immorally. (Full translations of the passages are below)

Poet Taufiq Ismail told Republika newspaper that the link between the Padang earthquake and chapter 17, verse 16, in the Koran was found by a young ulema.

“It is awesome. I am stunned,” Taufiq said.

“I think the SMS has spread widely with the purpose that the nation stops doing the things that have angered God,” he said.

Abdullah Syah, chairman of North Sumatra’s Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI), said that the earthquake was “a test and a warning for people in West Sumatra as well as in other areas.”

“Every one must open their heart and their eyes to the disaster,” he said.

The earthquake was a signal for the Indonesian government to eradicate immorality, Abdullah added.

Meanwhile, geology experts have said the powerful quake that shook Padang came from a spot near — but not inside — the Sunda Trench, a long undersea crescent of seismic energy stretching from north of Aceh to the east of East Timor.

Tectonic plates from India and Australia are grinding slowly under plates that support Indonesia and Burma at a rate of up to six centimeters per year, causing explosive releases of force.

Quake expert Sri Widiyantoro, from the Bandung Institute of Technology, said the precise cause of the jolt in Padang did not come from the seam between plates, but was triggered by a break in the middle, a type known as an intraplate quake.

Translation of Koran verses referenced in SMS message

Chapter 17, Verse 16 (Al Isra)

“And when We desire to destroy a town, We command its affluent ones, those [inhabitants] of it who enjoy the graces [of God], meaning its leaders, [We command them] to obedience, by the tongue of Our messengers; but they fall into immorality therein, rebelling against Our command, and so the Word is justified concerning it, that it should be chastised, and We destroy it utterly, We annihilate it by annihilating its inhabitants and leaving it in ruins.”

Chapter 17, Verse 58 (Al Isra)

“There is not a town — its inhabitants are the ones meant — but We shall destroy it before the Day of Resurrection, through death, or chastise it with terrible chastisement, by killing [its inhabitants] or otherwise. That has been inscribed in the Book, the Preserved Tablet.”

Chapter 8, Verse 52 (Al Anfal)

“The way of these people is like the way of Pharaoh’s folk and those before them: they disbelieved in God’s signs and so God seized them, with chastisement, because of their sins. Truly, God is strong, in what He wills, severe in retribution.”