Kassim Ahmad

Essays and commentaries from Malaysia's foremost thinker and philosopher

Monday, September 11, 2017

THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC

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                                 THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC. 

                               TAKE HEED, O YE DISBELIEVERS!

                                LESSON FROM THE SINGKING OF THE “UNSINKABLE” TITANIC
                                                                   By:  Kassim Ahmad
                                                                      28 August, 2017
                                                    darul_hikmah333@yahoo.com.my
 
   The famous ship, The Titanic (what a name!) made by Great Britain in 1912. Its owners and caption boasted that even God cannot sink it. To prove their faith in the “unsinkable” Titanic the owners purposely did not provide enough life-boats in case it does sink.
  On that fateful day, it left the Port Southampton and half an hour later it hit  an iceberg and sank! All crew and passengers were killed, except a few to tell the tale.
    It was a case of instantaneous punishment by God in modern times. The Quran narrates tales of punishments by God of many ancient communities who rebelled against God and His messengers --  the peoples of Noah, Hud and many others. Yet do human beings take heed?
   When God told the angels He was going to create a vicegerent (khalifah) to rule the Earth, the angels protested, saying that they will make corruption and shed blood. Human beings have surely shed blood in two bloody world wars. God forbid that a Third World War fought with nuclear arms take place! It would be the Human Community’s suicide. Taking examples from God’s punishments of ancient peoples, the Human Family will persist, as long as God wills. We have added the conditionality because Life is God’s trail and teaching for the Human Family.
   Look at the vast, the very, very vast universe that He has created. Why? He wants to tell the disbelievers if they can do the same. Obviously they cannot. So submit, willingly or unwillingly.  The universe has existed many million years ago and can go on for many more millions of years. God is Energy-in-Chief, intelligent Energy-in-Chief, that is.
   The Quran states that finally when universal energy is exhausted, the universe would collapse upon itself, leaving God’s Countenance. What is God’s Countenance? Can anyone imagine the simultaneous creation of the universe and God’s Being? What is Time? What is Space? God fills all Time and all Space.
   Why does God create the universe and the human family when all will be finally destroyed?
   We began this essay with the lesson of the sinking of the “unsinkable” Titanic. It is not for human beings, however great they are,  to boast. Only God is great. We will conclude with the thought that God is a mistery and His ways are misterious. But not irrational. The world is Supra-rasional. It is Higher Reason. The Uncaused Cause. God is the Uncaused Cause. He stands by Himself. He is Intelligent Power-Chief to Whom all contingent beings must submit. 
 The error made by the owners of The Titanic to be a fatal error.

_______________________________
KASSIM AHMAD is a Malaysian author. His website is >www.kassimahmad.blogspot.com

Kassim Ahmad at 12:35 PM
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Kassim Ahmad
(About Kassim Ahmad By: M. Bakri Musa) Kassim Ahmad is Malaysia's foremost thinker and philosopher. He grabbed national headlines in the 1950s with his dissertation on the characters of Hang Tuah (Perwatakan Hang Tuah), the Malay literary classic. In it he challenged the traditional interpretation and made the hitherto hero Hang Tuah as nothing more than a palace hack, and elevated the anti-hero Hang Jebat as the true hero, willing to kill even the sultan in defence of honor and principles. Kassim was jailed for nearly five years under the ISA for daring to express openly his political views, an experience which he recounted in his book, Universiti Kedua (Second University). Kassim again shook the Malay world with his "Hadith: A Re-Examination" in which he challenges the infallibility of the purported words of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. Except for an honorary doctorate in Letters conferred by the National University of Malaysia, the country has not seen fit to honor this great public intellectual. June 2005
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