In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

 

SAD DEMISE OF TERRI SCHIAVO –WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

 

[Shamim A Siddiqi, New York]

 

Ultimately the 41 year old mentally paralyzed woman, “starving” and bed ridden for the last fifteen years, Terri Schiavo died on March 31, 2005 in Florida as the death was inevitable to her under the “condition” she was forced to live. She was left to sink to death under the cruel shadow of brutal legal mongering and tyranny of the “system” that America inherits from its forefathers. Thousands and thousands of people are dying every day around the globe due to war, famine, floods, earthquakes, Tsunamis, tornados, HIV, malaria, hunger, contaminated water and what not. Many of these causes are natural phenomenon whereas many deaths are caused due to human callousness and selfish “capitalistic” mentality that survives only on greed, exploitation and accumulation of wealth at the cost of sufferings to teaming millions. But her death had occurred in the USA, the most enlightened, the most advanced and the richest country of the world. It was due to the fault of the American system in which she was pulsating. It has the means and the resources and the capacity to prolong her life to a “destined” future. It is the cruel secular system of the country that had killed her systematically by denying her food, water and medical technology that could keep her to live for sometime more for the satisfaction of millions and millions of people in America and abroad that include her parents, relatives and the “opportunist” pro-life politicians.      

 

In fact, God first created man with three urges and a strong freewill. He then created this universe and what it contains for humans consumption to satisfy his/her urges the way he/she likes. Whatever man possesses – life, time, talents and resources and what he sees around him in this cosmos all are trust in his/her hands. He is accountable to God the way he/she uses them on earth. If it as per His guidance, he/she will be rewarded with eternal bliss [paradise] but if he/she uses them as per his/her own whims and caprices [as we see around us today and through ages] he/she will meet with eternal pain [the hellfire]. God, then, in His infinite mercy, arranged to send guidance through His appointed messengers from Adam to Muhammad for man as how to live, act and behave on earth.

 

Thus, life in the hands of late Terri was a “trust” from God. She had every right by virtue of our Constitution that guarantees life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and by her faith in God to hold it till she could die a natural death on her own accord. But the system of the country deprived her of this opportunity. The blame of her death can precisely and squarely be placed to the legal procrastination of proceedings in the courts that choked her to death. The stoppage of feeding system was a forced suicide imposed upon her by the legal system. It was thrust upon her. It denied her the right to live. Rather, coerced her to give up her life, the trust from God in her hands.

 

The matter becomes more ridiculous when one finds that the constitutional provisions of each state confirms it’s believe in God and takes “inspiration” from this concept. Unfortunately, everywhere it is the part of the Preamble which is perhaps not binding as a governing class except in four States: Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia and Hampshire where it is part of their State Constitution but not in effect due to secular behavior at the helm of affairs. Each state is inspired by the concept of God but they act differently when it comes to action.  Can anything be more hypocritical than this open denial of “God in action”?

 

This is called the mockery of the situation. They allege to be loyal to God but in each case they resolved to carry out their affairs as per their own “conscience.”  Then, where is the authority of God and what lies in His domain? Unfortunately, our forefathers were not “sincere” to God or wanted to remain secular for all “practical” porpoises, keeping the situation of religious skirmishes back home in their mind about the lands from where they migrated.

 

So is the case with our adage on currency notes:" In God we trust" but in fact we do what we like to do and there is no trust in God. President Bush “used” God and the concept of pro-life as a means to get into power by befouling the American people but his entire life, policies, program, political and economic maneuverings are outside His domain and hence unjust.

 

A believer in God surrenders to Him and follows His directives in every walk of life. But the tragedy of Christianity lies in the fact that it hasn't got any system of life except some beliefs and dogmas. As a result it has no choice but to surrender every thing outside church to the worship of devil or its agents: secularism, liberalism, materialism, Epicureanism and Capitalism. From each field God has been ousted point blank and Church has no control over any thing except reading Bible stories, exhorting to rhetoric and rendering oath to President once in four years. This is all that Christianity stands for today in the USA. Christianity, in fact, is no where found in a dominating position. Poor Terri succumbed to death at the altar of our secular Constitution, in spite, of the fact, people are religious, mostly God-fearing but out of laxity, want to keep religion outside political arena, thereby giving full control to the devilish forces to control all the three organs of the state, “forcing” God to stay within the four walls of the church. How many “Terries” will die in this process only God knows?

 

It is now a land mark question before all of us as how to bring God to be  worshiped in every walk of like, to the pedestal of power and to “Rotunda” from where His Ten Commandments have been “ousted” by the “criminal” Justice that protects the sanctity of the so-called ”secularism”. Only then we the People of America will be able to earn His blessings in this life and in the life hereafter.

 

 

Shamim Siddiqi

April 1, 2005