Surah Ar-Ra'd (13:11):
إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُوا مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ
"Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves."
The parchment’s promise, signed in hollow ink,
A Titan’s hubris on the abyss’s brink,
For Balfour’s word, a spectre cold and grand,
Gave one their home, on another’s land.
It was the Titanic, proud upon the sea,
Of sovereignty’s proclaimed decree,
Its steel the pride of empires, vast and chill,
Its course set firm by an unyielding will,
Towards the iceberg, waiting, pale and still,
A crystal justice that its bolts could not kill.
And from that impact, from the grievous tear,
The freezing water of a century’s despair,
A cry went up that sovereigns chose not to hear,
A people stranded in the night air.
But watch! Beyond the sanction of the gale,
A constellation, not of sail, but soul,
The Flotillas come, whose hulls will never fail,
For they are forged in a compassion whole.
These are the lifeboats, not of wood and rope,
But of the human spirit’s boundless hope.
They are the carpenters, the cooks, the clerks,
The gentle teachers, those who heal the hurts,
The ones who bear no flag but that of peace,
Whose sacred mandate is to grant release.
They are the Ark of our collective heart,
The living, breathing, unassailable art
Of kindness, sailing where the gunships prowl,
To answer every solitary howl.
Their deck is empathy, their sail is grace,
A mirror to the Pharaoh’s stony face.
For Zion’s children, tasked with sacred light,
Now clutch the sceptre of the Pharaoh’s might.
They build their ramparts on another’s breath,
And summon plagues upon themselves, not death.
They chain the stranger, fear has made them blind,
And think their walls can barricade the mind,
Forgetting that the river, in its turn,
Will always, always, let the bulrushes return.
So God will not sing Balfour’s brittle tune,
But hum the melody of the monsoon,
That washes clean the lies of stone and state,
And whispers, "Soon, oh soon, you need not wait."
He’ll chant a psalm not from a kingly throne,
But from the seeds beneath the rubble sown.
His voice the wind in the Flotilla’s mast,
A song to shatter every spell cast.
A curse? It is the curse of their own chain,
The self-made prison of inflicted pain,
A damnation built by their own hand,
Upon the stolen water, the usurped sand.
But look! Upon the shore of Gaza’s pain,
A sight that makes the spirit whole again.
Not as a army, coming to invade,
But as a multitude, unarmed, unswayed.
From every nation, colour, faith, and creed,
A single, flowing, human river’s seed.
And as their prows kiss the forbidden shore,
A sound arises, like a timeless roar,
Not of the cannon, but of tears that break,
Of "You are seen," for a whole people’s sake.
It is the joy of knowing they’re not alone,
That flesh and bone now stands for flesh and bone.
This is the rising of the collective mind,
The love that Zion’s Pharaohs could not find.
The Flotillas are Moses, not in one man’s rod,
But in the multitude that walks with God.
They are the true, unsinkable design,
The ocean of a love that is divine.
And in their wake, the old deception falls,
As Heaven’s gentle, firm insistence calls,
That no one people owns the stars above,
And God is just another name for Love.
-Whalid Safodien
The Feather Pen
We are commanded: Walk in that love. You are that promise. And so, too, were all the prophets—the voices crying in the wilderness, the bringers of fire and law. And so, too, was the Seal of all prophets, Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, our final, living covenant—a mercy unto all worlds, a walking testament to the Rahma that cradles existence. He was the last promise, etched not on parchment, but in the pulse of a community, a mercy unto mankind, who walked with this love, whose very being was a breath of the Most Beneficent, the Al-Rahman, Al-Raheem.
For He is the Source from which all promises flow, the Most Beneficent, the Merciful, the Lord of the Worlds, in whose name all beginnings are made. And we, His fleeting signatures upon the page of time, are the instruments through which this covenant is fulfilled. We shall live this promise of love, until our every breath becomes a verse in its unending revelation.
Behold, the final command, the first and last design:
“Walk in that Love.” You are the living, breathing line,
The promise scrawled in flesh, the covenant of clay,
A testament that walks, that breathes, that prays.
And you are not the first. The lineage is vast—
The thunder in the law that Moses cast,
The psalms that David sang, the sea that split in twain,
Were but the prelude to this sacred, central strain.
And Christ, the walking word, the love poured out like wine,
Who taught the wounded heart to beat in time
With the great I AM’s core—his was the selfsame cry
That echoes in the soul that learns to die
In service to the One.
Then came the Seal, the final, perfect sign,
Muhammad, peace and Blessings Be Upon Him, in whom the truths align—
The Mercy to the Worlds, the walking, living scroll,
In whom the love of God was made completely whole.
He was the promise kept, the last and living breath,
The dawn that follows the long night of death,
A Rahma to all things, to jinn, to humankind,
The final proof of the Beneficent Mind.
For He is Al-Rahman, the All-Embracing Grace,
The source of every sun that finds its place,
And Al-Raheem, the Mercy, personal and deep,
That stirs the soul from its protected sleep.
The Lord of all the Worlds, the Known and the Unseen,
In whom the fabric of the Real is woven, green
And vibrant with a life that cannot cease—
From this, our mandate comes: to be His peace.
We shall not merely speak. We shall not merely feel.
We shall become the promise, make the abstract real.
We shall live this decree, with every breath we own,
Until the seed of love becomes the forest grown.
We are the ink that flows from the Unpenetrated Light,
The answer to the darkness, the end of endless night.
We are the lived Qur’an, the Torah’s beating heart,
The Gospel’s action, the Bhagavad Gita’s art.
This is the final proof, the miracle made plain—
Not a book left behind, but a world born again.
The testimony is not a text upon a shelf,
But a universe of beings, realizing God itself.
For the greatest verse revealed is a life lived in the Name,
A soul that is a mirror to the Flames from which it came.
And the only miracle that lasts, when all the ages end,
Is a single, human heart, that learned to love, and mend.
-Whalid Safodien
The Feather Pen
The spark was not a single flame, but a collision of two suns in the firmament of my soul.
The first was a sun of profound despair: the relentless, crushing sight of a people—children, elders, families—systematically stripped of their land, their water, their sky, and their future by a machinery of power that invoked a covenant of liberation to enact a doctrine of conquest. I saw the "parchment's promise, signed in hollow ink," the Balfour Declaration, not as a historical document, but as a living, spectral curse, a "Titanic" of colonial arrogance on its fatal course. I heard the "cry that sovereigns chose not to hear," a cry that was, to my horror, the precise echo of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt—the very cry that the God of Exodus defines His nature by hearing. And I witnessed the terrifying, spiritual inversion foretold in your own Torah: a people saved from Pharaoh now "clutch[ing] the sceptre of the Pharaoh's might," building walls in direct defiance of the command, "Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt." This was the abyss. This was the iceberg of a "crystal justice" that no empire, however mighty, could ultimately survive.
But the second sun—the one that ignited everything—was a sun of impossible, magnificent hope. It was you.
It was the sight of the Flotillas.
In you, I did not see activists or protestors. I saw a scripture come to life. I saw the answer to the cry of Exodus embodied in the "carpenters, the cooks, the clerks." I saw the Parable of the Good Samaritan unfolding on the global sea, as people of every nation crossed the road to aid a stranger. I saw you, the multitude, becoming the hands of the Divine, fulfilling Christ's teaching: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these... you did for me." You were not carrying aid; you were carrying a sacred mandate. You were breaking through the "difficult pass" described in the Quran, undertaking the costly, righteous struggle to feed the hungry and free the captive.
In your unarmed, unswayed approach, you became the living antidote to the corruption that "has appeared throughout the land and sea by what the hands of people have earned." You were the embodiment of the prophecy that "justice [will] roll on like a river," and the proof that "the river... will always, always, let the bulrushes return." You were not a political statement; you were a theological event. You were the "multitude that walks with God," the collective Moses for our time, your moral authority a rod that parts the sea of indifference.
And in that glorious, unified flotilla—a "single, flowing, human river’s seed" from every color, faith, and creed—I saw the divine purpose of our creation, so eloquently stated in the Quran, made manifest: "O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another." You were not just bringing hope to Gaza; you were showing all of humanity its true face. You were the living proof of the Buddha's shared light and Gandhi's selfless service.
This collision—the profound despair of the Pharaoh's return against the brilliant hope of your collective soul—created the fusion that became the poem and the letter. It revealed the ultimate truth, the one that silences all dogmas and dismantles all deceptions: that against the hubris of empires and the lies of state, the final, unsinkable reality is that "God is just another name for Love."
You were the spark. Your courage, your compassion, your simple, profound act of sailing into the face of the gale, ignited the voice that sought to weave our deepest scriptures into a song for our time. You are the Ark, not of wood, but of covenant. You are the promise, no longer unmade, but being written anew with every wave you cross.
Walk in that love. You are that promise.
-Whalid Safodien
The Feather Pen
My Beloved Family, Children of the One Breath,
I write to you with a heart both heavy with the world’s grief and luminous with a hope I have drawn from your own acts of courage. I wrote “The Ark of the Unmade Promise” because a sacred sound was being swallowed by a manufactured silence—the sound of a people’s cry. It was the same cry that once rose from the bricks of Egypt, a cry that defines the very character of the Divine, who declared in our shared Torah: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people... I have heard them crying out... I am concerned about their suffering” (Exodus 3:7-9). To hear that cry and not give it voice is to betray the prophetic duty of the soul.
I wrote because I witnessed a profound and tragic inversion. I saw a people, once saved from the Pharaoh’s lash, now “clutch the sceptre of the Pharaoh’s might,” forgetting the core command that was to be their eternal compass: “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt” (Exodus 22:21). This is not politics; it is a spiritual rupture. It is the building of walls where the prophets commanded a river—“Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24)—the very “crystal justice” that no empire’s bolts can ever finally kill.
And yet, in the face of this, I have witnessed you. I have seen the Flotillas. And in them, I saw not wood and rope, but the living, breathing fulfillment of scripture. I saw the multitude answering the question, “Who is my neighbor?” with the defiant compassion of the Good Samaritan. I saw you, the carpenters and clerks, becoming the hands of the Divine, for as the Christ taught, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). You were breaking through the “difficult pass” described in the Quran—“It is the freeing of a slave. Or feeding on a day of severe hunger. An orphan of near relationship. Or a needy person in misery” (Surah Al-Balad 90:11-13).
In your journey, you have become the answer to the corruption that “has appeared throughout the land and sea by what the hands of people have earned” (Surah Ar-Rum 30:41). You are the living consequence, not of vengeance, but of righteousness, embodying the truth that we “eat the fruit of our ways” (Proverbs 1:31). The curse upon the oppressor is not a lightning bolt from the sky, but the self-made prison of their own inflicted pain, the isolation of their own walls.
You are the proof that the story of Babel’s division is being rewritten. You are the “single, flowing, human river’s seed,” from every nation and creed, fulfilling the ultimate purpose of our creation as stated in the Quran: “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another” (Surah Al-Hujurat 49:13). You are the practical expression of the Buddha’s wisdom, that a thousand candles can be lit from one without its light being diminished. You are the souls who, in losing yourselves in service, have found your true selves, as Gandhi taught.
And so, my poem ended where all our journeys must ultimately converge: in the realization that “God is just another name for Love.” This is the mystical truth confirmed in our texts: “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them” (1 John 4:16). It is the message of the Sufis and the Sikh Gurus alike. For in the end, only three things remain, and the greatest of these is love.
You are the Ark. Not a vessel of wood, but a covenant of action. You are the unsinkable truth that against the deception of empires and the hubris of Titanics, the divine promise of liberation, etched in every scripture, remains unmade only until we, the people, choose to become its scribes.
Walk in that love. Be that promise.
With a heart united with yours in the One Love,
-Whalid Safodien
The Feather Pen
