Who's to blame for the deaths of innocent?

45 killed and 100 wounded - in Lahore, Pakistan - last Friday. The question that I'd ask is not who's to blame for this (series of) tragedy, because surely everyone would have someone to blame for such violence. My real question would be: Are we blaming the right person?

Conspiracy theorists immediately blame - secret societies, governments and sometimes even lizard kings - when bad things happen to innocent people.

When there is poison in our food (or at least conspired to exists), they blame the government for 'population control'. When terrorists attack civilians, they blame the 'secret society' - which control governments - to find excuses to invade others.

Theorizing the cause of tragedies and chaos is natural but when all calamities are somehow linked? That's paranoia.

Consider the following. When Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was trying to fuse a bomb in his undies inside a plane full of civilians last Christmas, I believe he wasn't thinking about helping the United States garner sympathy and support from the Americans (and the World) to justify another invasion of an oil-rich country, possibly a Muslim one. In fact, as what he himself revealed - after his unsuccessful terror attempt - he was simply aiming for Jihad. Let's roll back 40 years to 13th May 1969. Anyone dares to say that the racial riots in Malaysia then were devised by the government to impose more power?

My point is this: Why make a link to only some of the tragedies that happen around the globe, and not all of them? Unless of course a conspiracy theory works better when some chaos - like May 13th - are simply ignored. I haven't even discussed about the good things that happen around the world. Ignore them too? Let's be realistic. Live now. Look at the evidence. The only thing that is arriving is more and more - sufferings and deaths - especially if we choose to believe some facts and ignore others, only to miss the real cause of these innocent deaths.

Now coming back to the bombings in Lahore, we may find that there are several possible causes of these incidents. But like all terror attacks, it all boils down to hatred.  Sunnis hate Shi'ites, Shi'ites hate Sunnis. Boom. Al Qaeda hates America, America hates Al Qaeda. Boom. Malays hate Chinese, Chinese hate Malays. Boom. To borrow from Syed Akbar Ali, Boom Boom and Boom.

What about natural disasters? Are the deaths of innocent lives - in Haiti earthquake, hurricane Katrina and tsunami hit in 2004 - simply the acts of God? In fact, it could be argued that most of the victims could have been rescued more efficiently so that more deaths could have been prevented. Newsweek's Jeneen Interlandi has written about why Chile's 100 times stronger earthquake is not as deadly as the one that struck Haiti. The quake in Chile has a death toll of 120 (until 27th Feb), whereas the quake in Haiti has killed at least 230,000 lives. Two main factors of the dramatically lower death toll in Chile were identified: better infrastructure; and preparedness. Let me add, Chile's 8 times larger GDP per capita - compared to Haiti - might also account for something.

So let's refrain from wrongly blaming secret societies (for terrorism) and God (for deaths in natural disasters). Let's continue with the peace process, develop our nation and promote peacefulness all around.