Okay explanation time:
In Judeau-Christian religions it's accepted that women are responsible for original sin. While the parables might be differant, Islam takes this to an extreme. The idea is that women are inherantly corrupt because of this act, and while they can be saved and make it to heaven just like men, it takes far more effort because of their instincts. The idea being that women can't help but manipulate and corrupt men, and even their forms are designed to do this. Due to a love of their women muslim cultures wind up covering them not simply to protect men from their influance, but to prevent what they see as an inherant behavior for their own protection and so they can make it to heaven.
That is a basic definition. The thing is that most clergy when addressing the faithful assumes that the people they are speaking to have a grasp of the basic dogmatic foundations. To some extent it's the "logical" atheists who make fun of this kind of thing who are the real idiots when they talk about it not making sense, because it makes perfect internal
sense within the religion if you learn about it.
I am not saying this is correct, right, or accurate. Simply explaining where it comes from. Either you believe in the religion or you don't, however these beliefs are a lot deeper and more consistant than a lot of people want to give them credit for.
Now, the problem with the Judeau-Christian-Islamic, the god of the "Men Of the Book" punishing people for something like this is that he doesn't generally F@ck around with dubious signs, portents, and random disasters. He seems to mark his work clearly, and tends to do things like whack major cities and centers of decadence (Sodom and Gamorrah for example), curse everyone with "Babble" (Tower Of Babel), and send very angry Angels to
break legs and things.
Had a semi-invincible prophet walked into say LA or Hollywood and started screaming to the media (who would find themselves unusually drawn to him) that God was POed and to do something, and then everyone in the city was turned into salt, or the entire region was leveled by an Earthquake... well that's more in keeping with the MO. Assuming of course you take the various scriptures literally and believe that the demands are what god wanted as opposed to various leaders who changed things over time for their own agenda.
For the record I'm a Christian Agnostic, I am not a deeply spiritual person, but generally believe in the tents of Christianity but that none of the existing faiths/churches have it right. I also believe in God as a benevolent being, and thus do not put faith in The Bible as anything except for a guideline in the most vauge sense.
At any rate the point is that despite the differances most of this applies to Islam as well even if things are defined a bit differantly.
I suspect the cleric is trying to fight off "Women's Sufferage" and increasing western influance in the region, including the example of strong, and empowered women, who have been part of an occupying force.
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One thing I will say though is that the number of natural disasters is creepy, and has inspired a lot of imagination. That said I do not think it fits with any established religion as there has hardly been any kind of undeniable address of humanity. I suppose it could be heralding something big/supernatural, but if it is, I don't think it will be anything specifically foretold in any religion. Most likely the disasters are coincidence, or purely the work of man.
When I say "the work of man" by that I mean that I do not entirely discount the "conspiricy theory" of potential earth-quake/tectonic manipulation type weaponry. I don't go running around with a tin foil hat, or believe in any specific conspiricy here, but I do believe that all goverments conduct military weapons research. The "nuclear weapon" is decades old and it's foolish to assume nothing new has been developed in the meantime. Things like causing earthquakes or controlling the weather have been human dreams for a long time, and doubtlessly there have been people trying to work on doing both for a very long time. I don't find it totally ridiculous to think someone might have succeeded, it's no worse than if someone was to talk about the development of nuclear technology decades before it appeared.
I tend to look at Heinlan's occasional mention f "X weapons". X simply meaning unknown. The stuff that any major goverment is going to be keeping secret for an advantage, or to try and deploy as an "ace in the hole" if the need arises. I can virtually guarantee that we've got stuff up our sleeves other than a conventional military, a bunch of hackers, and a nuclear stockpile. Scientists hardly decided "whelp, this is as far as we can go, let's all retire".
All of this aside, the problem with such theories like Obama using an Earthquake machine or weather control machine or something, is that the targets we're looking at make no real sense to any kind of strategy I can figure out. What's more the US has also suffered natural disasters (like say New Orleans) over the last few years so it's not like we've been suspiciously immune.
this should become a national annual holiday
