ABSTRACT
On a recent visit to a mosque that I usually frequent in my childhood town, I saw a large poster, centrally placed on the notice board, which sought to offer an explanation for calamities, murder and crime. After a cursory look at the contents (see Box 1), I dismissed the poster as some religious group's limited view on the causes of injurious events. My academic training alerted me to the tone and causal relationship assumed in the poster. I am sure some of you may, like me, develop a counter intuitive response to the language on an initial reading. On further examination I noted that the poster was featured alongside various other messages including calls for relief actions in Turkey, Albania, Kosovo and Cape Town, and notices highlighting a range of social welfare services. Interestingly, the notice board also featured a series of messages censoring uncontrolled harmful practices such as smoking, alcohol consumption and violent behaviour. These messages also called on the congregation to observe the mosque and other places of worship as smoke-free zones. I then re-examined all the posters within the broader meaning system prevalent among the sector of Muslims I am most familiar with and the Imam's earlier sermon. I noted that consistent with the views expressed in the poster all of the messages invoked Q'uranic injunctions and practices, and sayings of Prophet Muhammed and his companions, including classical scholars of jurisprudence, to censure risk-taking behaviours and to alternatively encourage community safety in all its dimensions. That the protagonist of these messages also engaged in various welfare, health promotion and community development initiatives, suggests that for them and their followers injuries and ill health are definitely preventable. However, this Muslim group's engagement in social welfare activism is punctuated by three ideas. First, calamities, murders, crimes and other injurious incidents are only preventable in so far as they are blessed and willed by the Supreme Creator. Second, protection, prevention and community safety are predicated on individual and collective behaviour, which occur within a particular prescribed socio-moral framework. Third, safety promotion as
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BOX 1 AMITIES, MURDER, CRIME. WHY? WHY? WHY?
