Horizon

There appear to be ten pages worth of comments there. Care to give an excerpt?

While there are some people willing to criticize the organizers of Hajj:

"It is very sad that despite so many unfortunate events during previous Hajj, the Saudi authorities fail to show results. It is of great embarrassment and shame for Saudi, one of the richest oil producing country, for not taking decisive measures to handle pilgrims just once a year while they have eleven months to prepare each and every year. I wonder how many more fatal stampede disasters will it take for them act."

... there are a lot of comments - too many for my liking - along these lines:

"What has happened is unavoidable.There's ought be confusion and chaos in such huge gatherings.I dont think we can blame anyone for the tragedy. What's destined to happen will happen. That's the Will of Allah."

"We should not blame anyone for this act of God. To those who have lost loved ones, Allah will take care of them. "We belong to Him, to Him we return."

"We should not grieve no sorrow. We plan and Allaah plans while Allaah's plan is the Best of planning. The pilgrims sucrificed for Allaah's sake and if Allaah wills they shall be in paradise."

I think Allah is being framed.

...or confused with the Ministry of Hajj?

Ultimately this is a theological problem common to all monotheistic religions as far as I know, or at least ones with all-knowing and all-powerful deities. The difference is that some people still take that seriously and some don't. Seems to me the divide between these two groups is greater than those between any religious communities as normally defined.

Well, yes, in a general sense; but the fact that so many Muslims "still take that seriously" in a way that, say Christians do not strikes me as disturbing. The Christian Church has its fatalistic flashbacks, but it is hard to imagine a similar shrug of the shoulders if for example hundreds of people were annually being killed at St. Peters due to inadequate crowd control.

No argument there, though I do wonder how many Christians there might be around the world who are similarly fatalistic.

I'd also suggest that Alan's statement about fatalism being "common to all monotheistic religions" is, erm, whatever the opposite of a generalization is. A specificalization?

Fatalism shows up all over the place -- wasn't it common among Classical paganism, and isn't it still a hallmark of various Taoist or Confucian practices in East Asia? It certainly seemed to crop up in what I've read of Tibetan Buddhism.

The point about omnicient/omnipotent deities is also, I think, a non sequitur as in practice belief in a deterministic future has not led to fatalism. It's hard to imagine a Christian theology more deterministic than double-election Calvinism — an Evangelical friend of mine uses the phrase "zombie-robot Calvinism" at times. But you can't really imagine Calvinistic Geneva shrugging off this sort of thing as "God's will."

I'd also suggest that Alan's statement about fatalism being "common to all monotheistic religions" is, erm, whatever the opposite of a generalization is. A specificalization?

If I say that all cars have wheels, most people would not assume that I mean wheels are exclusive to cars.

The point about omnicient/omnipotent deities is also, I think, a non sequitur as in practice belief in a deterministic future has not led to fatalism.

If one believes that the future is determined by god, then I do not see how one can not be fatalistic unless one doesn't take the idea seriously. Please explain logically how that works.

Thanks!

If I say that all cars have wheels, most people would not assume that I mean wheels are exclusive to cars.

Maybe, but I read "theological problem common to monotheistic religions" as monotheism implies fatalism. Sorry if I was mistaken.

Please explain logically how that works.

I'm afraid I can't, as I'm claiming that historically it just doesn't work like it seems like it should. It's a commonly-noted paradox that rigid Calvinism should lead to social depravity but doesn't: logically, why behave if you're already irrevocably damned or heaven-bound? Calvinist societies themselves, however, were anything but licentious. Whether this was because they weren't taking the idea of predestination seriously or some other reason, I have no idea.