Change of Heart Needed

The only thing we know with certainty about the recent Flydubai Incident is that the airplane suddenly dropped 14,000 feet (equivalent to 5 times the height of the Burj Al Khalifa building) in 30 seconds. This was tracked and recorded by the Flightradar24 website in its earliest reports before anything more was known.

Trying to imagine what it might have felt like to be in such a vertiginous dive helps to confirm the scientific analysis that it would have been impossible to pull out of it!

An experienced pilot comments that the G-forces involved would “cause catastrophic structural failure of the main wing spars, and immediately pin anyone, not tightly buckled, to the ceiling with crushing force.”

Furthermore he states that the conditions were such that “the wings would violently snap upward and separate from the fuselage long before the plane leveled.” (See Box for details)

By all the measures of aviation physics then the plane would have had to spiral all the way down to a horrendous crash. It should never have been able to resume level flight.

Yet we have verified images showing passengers calmly making their way to the cockpit after this incredible plunge in order to rescue the heroic Indian pilot and thwart the perpetrator’s horribly wicked plan. The plane was then flown for another hour or so till it landed without trouble at a Saudi airport.

It follows that the only way to make sense of the actual sequence of events is to believe that it was a Miracle, in which Allah allowed Angels to cup the airplane and save it from destruction. I have waited to write this article for some weeks in case any other explanation surfaces but there has been only silence.

Is this due to a stunned realization by the authorities concerned that the only rational way to understand the Flydubai Incident of September 30 is the extraordinary one I have put forward?

It is rare indeed when the doings of an Otherworldly Force are blazoned across the headlines of international news with such unchallengeable clarity!

As if to counter the natural incredulity about such Divine Action taking place in broad daylight, the same phenomenon was repeated within days.

A lady named Christa Pike was to be executed but the lethal injection twice failed to work. I have been waiting to learn if there were defects in the poisons used or technical faults, but nothing like this has been reported.

We can presume that after the first injection failed, the killer-doctors must have made thorough efforts to ensure that there would be no errors at the second attempt.

Accordingly the only rational conclusion is that Christa Pike was saved from certain death by an Act of God, particularly as she is still recovering well. When any outcome defies 99% of human expectations we may think of it as a Miracle.

(The qualification about human expectations is important. It may well be that even daily events, such as Birth of a Baby or Photosynthesis represent Miracles but we have so lost the capacity for child-like wonder that it takes a result which is 99% contrary to human expectations for us to register it as one!)

So what do we learn from these two demonstrative interventions, normally very rare, taking place within days of each other? Both appear to be expressions of Allah’s Tenderest Inclinations.

In the first instance it was to save a plane full of Israeli tourists, families and children happily returning after a holiday -- who also happen to be a representative group of the very people the rest of the world and the International Justice system has been forced to see as implacable destroyers of the occupied Palestinians in their midst.

In the case of Christa Pike she was guilty of a crime but there were potentially exonerating circumstances which led a Federal Appeals court to stop her execution the day before it was to take place.

But this stay was urgently removed by the US Supreme Court and the state of Tennessee moved to carry out the sentence, only to run into a Greater Stop.

The ways of the Almighty are forever shrouded in mystery and no mere human can confidently ascribe reasons for them.

With this caveat I propose that these two outsize events were intended to stimulate nothing less than a complete Change of Heart, addressed to the people of the world.

In particular, the Israeli people are being challenged to respond with a Change of Heart in their relations with the whole Middle East.

Enough of war and hatred. Allow your better selves to prevail the way the Will of God prevailed against shrieking tons of raging metal.

The guardians of justice in the United States are called upon to institute empathetic responses to the complexities of crime and to cease the practice of hard-hearted, implacable killing.

Perhaps even to learn from the principles of Islamic Justice which are always supposed to promote the enshrining of Mercy (even if the recent callous execution of Bangladeshi citizens seems to have gone against such principles.)

Let us turn often to the story in the Holy Qur’an of the sublime she-camel which was sent to the people of Thamud to challenge them to mend their hearts. Which unfortunately they did not heed.

Let all of us vow today not to make the same mistake. Time is running out. But remember it takes only a split second for the mind to change and the heart to flower forever.

Salahdin Imam is a Harvard graduate. His memoir of university days and the Bangladesh Liberation war is to be published later this year.