When one examines the tragedies happening to the innocents in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq today, and watches the pain and sufferings experienced by the majority of people around the globe, it is reasonable to wonder: Is God dead or alive?

I have been asking this question which shocks Muslims, as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and many other believers, almost my entire life.  It is a valid query.

Philosophers and ordinary men and women have been debating this issue, at least, since civilization began!

If God is alive, if God represents love and peace, if God is merciful and beneficent, if God stands against evil, tyranny and oppression, if we all are His children and He makes no distinctions or preferences, if God is powerful and can stop wrong and wrong-doers, why would He then tolerate so much evil to dominate His kingdom? Why would He allow great calamities falling upon most members of His family?  Why would He put up with the rich stealing what should belong to the poor? Why would He permit the strong murdering, maiming and destroying the helpless? Why would He let war criminals wage genocide against other humans created in His image? Why would God give U.S. President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and other butchers weapons of mass destruction to carry out "crusades" and massacres in His name?

If this is the kind of world that God wants us to have, if the majority of people have to experience misery and pain for no other reason except greed and arrogance by a few, why did He create us in the first place?

Simple-minded people have quick and simplistic answers: "God is alive and well. God is All-Knowing. God created us to worship Him. God tests our endurance and faith to decide whether we must go to hell or to heaven."

This is sheer nonsense! As the Supreme Being who engineered this universe and established its laws, God does not need us, and cannot feel greater by our worship. He has no reason to test us or see us suffer as a means of punishing or rewarding us.

Again! What did the Afghani people, men, women and children, do wrong to gain God�s displeasure and wrath, and to be butchered and raped, men and women, in front of cameras, by U.S. backed Northern Alliance forces? Despite the most cruel and barbaric bombing witnessed by man, the great majority of Afghanis do believe in God and His prophets. They do pray five times a day, fast sunrise to sunset in the month of Ramadan and perform pilgrimage to Mecca, some of them walking the whole distance on foot.  As a matter of fact, due to years of drought and lack of food, the majority are virtually in continuous fast, day and night.  Though they, themselves don�t have much to give, they do offer charity to less fortunate people.

What else must Afghanis do to please God, earn His acceptance and avoid His anger?

Yet, the British invaded them. The Soviets littered their terrain with 10 million mines that cause daily deaths and injuries. And now the Americans, on behalf of the oil and arms industries, are showering them with seven-and-a-half tons bombs that dig 50-feet-deep craters. And to reach the Caspian Sea oil and gas deposits, the U.S. is unleashing on them a knit band of thieves, rapists, murderers, drug growers and smugglers, the Northern Alliance, who know no mercy, and suddenly have become "heroes and liberators."

God cannot witness this and be "alive." America and Israel have "killed" Him a long time ago. He was killed in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. He is being "killed" in every Palestinian city and village as we see today, with American weapons and blessings.

God was "murdered" millions of times in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; in Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia; in Panama, the Caribbean, Central and South America and Mexico; in South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, the Congo, Rwanda, Algeria, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia; in Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania and Chechnya; in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya and the Sudan. 

In accordance with the list of targets Washington has in hand, God will soon be "slain" again and again in Iraq.  Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Yemen are expected to follow. Powerful voices that set the stage for future U.S. actions are openly speaking of the inclusion of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. closest Arab allies.

I am not solely depressed by the human tragedies unfolding since my birth. There is a limit to what man can endure and take. Certainly, I am not the only one, who, when he or she leaves to the hereafter, will have no regret. Three quarters of the people on earth today share these feelings and believe in "mercy" destruction of the whole world as a solution to miseries, oppression and injustice.

The resentment and rejection of the current state of affairs is not confined to the poor, the disenfranchised, and the ordinary. 
Saudi Secretary of Foreign Affairs, the son of late King Faisal, made it known to the whole world, a couple weeks ago, that he too cannot take it anymore either. "U.S. policy makes those who are sane become insane."

In a recent anti-globalization conference in Beirut, 84-year -old Ahmed bin Bella, the man who led the Algerian revolution from his jail cell in Paris, and presided over the first independent Algerian government, has recently expressed his gloomy posture in this manner: "I wish to blow up the entire world, including myself.  The injustice faced by Arabs, Muslims and Third World people is enormous and cannot be endured. I find myself today to be a supporter of Osama bin Laden."

This writer is no different. I do, however, convey the same convictions and frustrations in a slightly different way. I dare to say God cannot be alive! If God is not dead, wouldn�t He bring an end to oppression and tyranny? He has done it before. He did it to Sodom and Gomorrah. He did it to the Babylonian, Persian and Roman empires. God even did it to His "Chosen People." He scattered them around the world after they disobeyed His commandments. Only a half of a century ago, God destroyed the British Empire on which the sun for hundreds of years did not set.

Our current empire of rich corporations, the only remaining empire today, is leading the American people and the world into annihilation. It is time to wake up and see where we are all heading. We have already reached the edge of the cliff.  Unless we change course, it would take our world only a little puff to fall into a real hell.

When that happens, this does not mean that God was "alive." It only means that He has risen from the "dead" and took charge; that He couldn�t take it anymore!