Did He not find you as an orphan then sheltered you?
Did He not find you unguided then guided you?
And did He not find you in need then sufficed you?
Qur’an 93:6-8
Automatons in dark suits and polished leather shoes ascend a cold marble podium to speak of law. Of humanity. Of civilization. Of the “sacred obligation” to protect the innocent.
They utter absurdities like Concern. Restraint. Proportionality. Humanitarian access. International obligations. Words so eloquent, so ornamental, polished so heavily by well-paid ghostwriters that they have been emptied of the sheer weight of the bodies they failed and the lives they betrayed.
Their diplomatic stoicism muffles a more manic truth that exposes their inner state, one which resembles Lady Macbeth’s frantic scream: “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” as they vigorously try to wash the moral stains off their guilty hands, as if they are not to blame, too.
It would be almost comical if the consequences of their spiritual emptiness were not so obscene... a carnival of masks, a grand charade, a postmortem party at the morgue of humanity.
While some still pay heed to this grotesque political theater of our age, I came across a post by susan abulhawa, who wrote of the unconscionable demonization of the men and boys Gaza: “An army of orphans. Someday the world will come to understand’s the resistance’s epic bravery and love for their land and ancestors.”
Instead of listening to the empty, soothsaying words of butchers and tyrants, who speak condescendingly about Palestine and the imperative to protect it, while also duplicitously criminalizing support for them in their own home countries, I choose to turn my gaze to the true leaders of our time.
The army of orphans: the unseen monarchs.
To those with dirt underneath their nails, who pitch up tents from tattered nothings and bags of bloodied flour.
Those whose eyes are the color of the rubble of their crushed homes, whose scent is their martyed mother’s musk and wafts of the smell of the last meal she was cooking before they burned her.
I think of those whose backs are broken by carrying full moons of abandonment every month, as the ebbs and flows of the sea engulf them, with chins chiseled by the cuts of daily, prolonged grief that only a 3 year, live-streamed holocaust can impart.
I think of those whose hearts are stitched with tin cans, shrapnel and Qur’anic verses.
Those who barely breathe through the eye of a needle.
Who carry the shredded remains of their siblings in plastic bags.
Those who gasp for air mixed with white phosphorous, skunk water and the crushing weight of an entire slumbering ummah, buried beneath the rubble of modern idol worship, betrayal and falsehood.
I turn my gaze to those who stand triumphant at the podium of honor in the womb of the darkest ocean, in the darkest of humanity’s hours.
I turn my heart’s gaze the victims of state terrorism the world over who subsist on a wing and prayer.
To the children we have failed, who fight nuclear armies in flip flops.
Those whose parents haven’t sold their dignity for a few measly shekels.
Those who make the flimsy iron of cowardly merkavas tremble.
Who have sand in their teeth from crawling in dark tunnels.
Who subsist on rationed dates, canned beans and bread mixed with blood.
Who recite muffled supplications that make the mountains shake, but that no one hears but Allah.
Those who drink generational tears, mixed with droplets of grace from the scarlet sky and bitter sea water.
In the last three years, it is said that around 85,000 children have lost one parent by the Israeli genocide in Gaza, including at least 30,000 children who have lost both parents.
Thousands of innocent souls suddenly find themselves in the vicious wilderness of survival, without support, care, or shelter, as the rest of the world pays lip service to their suffering.
And never mind the thousands of martyred children who have been killed. Those who murder them say they kill them because they are afraid of what they will do when they grow up, “if the child grows up, they will become a terrorist,” just as the Nazis said when they were asked why they killed children.
But these neatly rounded numbers and statistics are almost an offense, as they do not come close to conveying the tallies that truly matter:
How many angels weep for them? How many tears did they collectively shed? How many lonely sighs did they each let out? How much heartbreak can their little hearts possibly carry? How cold is it at night when no one is there? How many water gallons did they have to carry on their fragile backs? How many kilos did their families remains weigh? How many limbs are left?
How many years—decades— did they have to grow to be pretend to be strong little men and women?
How much more honor do they possess than the political leaders of this moment?
How does the earth keep spinning around its axis?
How many times over can the rage in their hearts burn the world?
Just like the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was orphaned, so were they.
Just like the Prophet Yusuf was abandoned in a well by his jealous brothers, so too was Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen, discarded and betrayed by their “brothers.”
Just like Prophet Ibrahim, they sacrifice their children.
Just like the Mother of Musa, they surrender their babies to the refuge of the Most Loving.
Just like the Prophet Ayyub waited decades in patience for relief to come, so much that his prophethood was doubted because of the longevity and extremity of his suffering, so too is victory for the oppressed doubted, ridiculed.. “If they are on the truth, why is justice taking so long?” they ask.
How many have given in to defeatism, denying what their hearts know?
How many have given up on them due to this seemingly endless nightfall, this never ending despair and weakness?
In that is a sign of their righteousness: that it is doubted, just as those on the prophetic path before them are doubted. When all is done, when it will be too late, only the true remain till victory.
Yet this despair and doubt is mere ash. It is inconsequential. It cannot harm them.
The doubters and backstabbers cannot change the fact that a small population of orphaned warriors made empires shake.
Because beneath this era of hypocrisy and endemic moral rot, a reign of a different kind is amassing power, rising: the army of the abandoned.
The Highnesses and Excellencies of this moment will never come close to understanding the likes of that orphan quadriplegic who terrified his occupier from his wheelchair, the boy who was made a Nakba refugee in 1948 and grew up in Gaza’s al-Shati refugee camp, and still managed to transform a society into being one of the most educated and organized, despite living in the most brutalized concentration camp on earth?
In truth, the only thing that provides solace in this era of endemic shamelessness and inhumanity, is holding on to the truth this mighty orphan army represents.
They will forever dwarf the political theater of the absurd that so callously persists. They tower over the meek and sheepish princes of the Kingdom of Fear, who pompously parade themselves in the hallways of deception, who bend at the waist before the throne of worldly powers.
They put to shame those who roar boldly like lions into the microphones, but bow quietly like sheep when the microphones are turned off.
They stand tall over those whose spines become pliable, who melt into puddles as soon as their own interests are at stake.
The truth is, this army of orphans stands alone as the true liege of our time, as they torch this hypocritical world aflame with nothing but reliance on the One, standing firm into the blood-soaked earth with their blessed, weary shoeless feet and ribcage full of honor.
Everyone will one day see that it was the unseen guardians of this moment that refused to dim their light when the whole world turned dark.
For when the Truth was left alone, when it was cut into a million pieces in a dark corner, muffled by the greedy, supremacist executioners and blood thirsty colonizers and those who worship at their feet, the orphans stood as guardians for it in a godless age. They held on to it with their molar teeth, even when the whole world called them “terrorists” for doing so. When they demanded they become “civilized” and “reasonable” and join them in the dark ritual of slaughtering the Truth.
This time will be remembered as the time when the wealthiest, most powerful barbarically preyed upon the weakest, upon children.
In development speak, places like Gaza, Sudan and Yemen are referred to as the “poorest” places in the world, when in fact, they possess the highest rate per capita of the rarest, nearly extinct assets of all: conviction, honor, courage, a spine.
The unseen ones of this era do not need a mic, nor a podium, for their existence to matter. They are the most honored ones of all at the court that matters most: that of the King of Kings.
Though their tyrants and their empty, embellished speeches will be forgotten, the mighty ragtag orphan army will be go down in history as the richest bastions of resistance against the Epstein class’ war on humanity.
As the last bulwarks standing against endemic end-time dishonor and debauchery.
So do not oppress the orphan,
nor repulse those who implore you for aid.
And proclaim the blessings of your Lord.
Qur’an 93:9-11