Tsunami toll tests all creeds

Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Christians make sense of great loss differently, writes Kenneth Woodward.

AFTER a cataclysm of Biblical proportions, people of all faiths ask, Why us? Why here? Why now?

The waters that rose up from the deep last week, drowning tens of thousands of people across a wide arc of south and southeast Asia, was just such a phenomenon. But most of those who survived to weep and mourn - like most of those who died - had never heard of Noah or the Biblical God of Wrath, figures so familiar to Christians and Jews; they were, instead, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists.