No one knows what God’s will is. Everyone speculates and opines based on their convictions, belief systems and hearsay. Would God want to send an invitation to the millions to His house? Make those millions come to his House with utmost sincerity and the purity in their hearts. Then would the same God, the ultimate in mercy, order a crane to malfunction and take the lives of his beloved pilgrims? Would the same God turn around and make the pilgrims brake barriers in Mina and cause a stampede, leaving over 700 helpless people dead and many missing, which in itself is perplexing? How could people in a wide-open area go missing without a trace? Only the Almighty God knows. If it is His will, then we mortals have to accept and accept it without a single word on our lips. Even my close friends, who have been fortunate enough to the visit the holy place a few times, were adamant that this was a blessing from the Almighty who took certain special people away in their sacred uniform to the highs of holy heaven. Many of the pilgrims must have asked in their prayers to meet the angel of death at that holy place. I smile at such blanket statements because those statements are coming from the emotional side of the heart and not from the rational side of the brain. To top it all off, my sincerely tuned friends give the royals a huge pat on the back by highlighting their generosity. Without a single claim from any greedy lawyer, supposedly the royal government has offered a sizeable compensation to every victim. I smile again at such sweeping statements, as what if one wants to file a claim at the venue? Can he or she do so and with who? Which law of the land will find who responsible? If it was the will of the Almighty then why is the government making that concession? Or, for that matter, my dear friend, have you seen any next of kin of those poor victims giving you a nod that, yes, they are holding that hefty and heavy check in their hand, which will give them solace and comfort for the rest of their lives? Agreed, most people heading over to the holy place must have prayed to the Almighty for a better end, an end that takes them straight to glorious heaven. But does that mean that all of the people were in chorus praying for a similar ending, to be either crushed by a crane or by the weight of other pilgrims? That is the real question. The operative word here is ‘all’. Do you honestly think that every single person wished for such a painful end? I very humbly and respectfully disagree. These are our wild interpretations that we spin to be more devout. The flip side of the argument is that there was negligence somewhere. That negligence cannot be sugar coated as the will of God. A close friend of mine even quoted the imam of the holy mosque, who rapidly absolved the Saudi government from any culpability. I respectfully asked a very simple question: whom does he work for? That was a painful question. By the way, no one is suggesting that the royal government has any involvement in these horrible tragedies but investigations and that too independent investigations into both these horrific incidents are paramount. The operative word here is independent. The thrust of the argument is that human negligence is fatal. If I push the pedal of my car to the maximum and, God forbid cause deadly harm to another human being, I cannot attribute it to the will of God. Similarly, if I enter the wrong side of the freeway or highway and kill myself and others I cannot give credit to the Almighty for my reckless disregard for the basic rules of traffic. People often mix devotion and human negligence. This is utterly fatal because, if the victims are guaranteed a ticket to heaven, this sets a dangerous precedent for those seeking that final destination at any cost. The fact of the matter is that one cannot expect a thorough and independent investigation in such a controlled society. One has to ask a very basic question: where can the allegedly missing go missing? Of course, there are many arguments that can stem from that painful question. The idea behind any investigation after any fatal mishap is to determine the actual cause. The root cause leads to a possible preventive measure, which can be implemented to avoid such a tragedy from reoccuring in the foreseeable future. We tend to shy away from such things as this in our poor brain’s chambers is processed as blasphemous and questioning the will of God. The brain is what differentiates us from other creatures made by the Almighty but only if we know how to use it. The writer is a Pakistani-US mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar