Or not really; more like man-made.

I watched in horror earlier today how a stampede to rival the Hillsborough football grounds disaster in 1989 may have killed as many as 1,000 shiite muslims while on a funeral march for a dead imam who they believe is a successor to prophet Muhammad.

According to both the BBC and CNN, the stampede was caused by panic when someone screamed of suicide bombers in the crowd’s midst. And all of this happened just 3 hours after mortar attacks on the mosque from which the procession began killed some 16 people and wounded scores of shiite worshippers.

Such a horrible turn of events, and completely unexpected. What horrifies me most is how I’m now imagining scores of human bodies trapped and suffocated against each other, like a cheap cliche metaphor of modern life, pushed to the brink by the fear of being caught in the blast radius of a suicide bomber.

“And now they’re killing each other,” my father remarked before heading off to church.

It’s like a cruel vindication of perceived American policy (conspiracy theorist ver 1.0): insertion and a foothold in the Middle East, and now turn muslims against other muslims. Okay, so I’m melodramatizing that part, but imagine how it looks to outsider eyes when you have muslims killing each other in the name of ideological differences. (Or is it just ideological? Is it cultural as well?)

I’ve argued for a kind of central authority amongst muslims as far as doctrines are concerned, but have recently read rejections of the same on some blogs about 2 to 3 weeks ago; apparently this is a hotly debated issue between islamic ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’. I’ll have to read up more on the specific debates, if I have time, but the point is that such internecine killings will continue unabated if nothing is done to reconcile these very real differences.

This whole damn thing stinks of kinslaying to me.