By Abdullah Al-Omairah

Not every grim face is ugly in appearance.

A face may be beautiful, polished before the cameras, and surrounded by applauding admirers, yet conceal a mind darker than an abandoned cellar.

The bleakness I speak of is not merely a color on the skin, nor a passing frown. It is the darkness that rises from the mind when mercy departs, knowledge abandons it, and conscience resigns.

Some minds do not live to understand the world, but to corrupt it.

Knowledge leaves them, and superstition enters.

Questions depart, and ready-made answers take over.

Their owners fail to explain an incident, so they invent a conspiracy; fail to resolve a dispute, so they summon an army; and fail to manage a small piece of land, so they demolish cities upon it and kill human beings on both sides.

What kind of minds are these?

What victory does a leader achieve by turning the land under dispute into a graveyard?

And what kind of politics is incapable of moving a single meter on the map, yet moves missiles across thousands of kilometers?

Strength does not lie in possessing the bomb, but in possessing the mind that knows when not to use it.

A finger may press the button that launches a missile, but the decision that prevents it requires an entire civilization.

When Humanity Departs and Reason Disappears

Prophets and messengers came to change history from within the human being.

They did not begin by changing borders, but by changing minds.

They shattered the idols carved by human hands, as well as the more dangerous idols erected within souls by fear, greed, and arrogance.

They restored to humanity the meanings of truth, mercy, responsibility, and openness of mind. They reminded people that power without justice is tyranny, knowledge without conscience is dangerous, and authority without accountability is corruption postponed.

But generations change.

An idea ignites, then someone comes along who preserves its ashes and forgets its flame.

Knowledge is born alive, only for the rigid, the captives of absurdity, and the mentally absent to turn it into texts they repeat without comprehending their meaning.

Minds advance, then superstition infiltrates them. Conspiracy peers through every window, thinking becomes an accusation, questioning becomes treason, and disagreement becomes sufficient cause for war.

Human beings then return to wearing the latest technologies while thinking with minds from the caves.

They carry smartphones but live with minds that trust nothing except rumors.

They command military arsenals but cannot control their own anger.

They build satellites capable of seeing the smallest details of the Earth, yet fail to see the human being standing before them.

O Minds .. the Mountain

The phrase “O Sariyah, the mountain!” has remained in memory because it captures a decisive moment of warning. When the picture becomes lost amid the battlefield, the fighter needs someone to direct him toward higher ground, from which he can see the danger, seek safety, and then prepare properly for the decisive battle between truth and falsehood.

The world today needs a similar cry:

O minds… the truth!

Rise slightly above the smoke of battle and look at what you are doing.

You dispute a city, so you demolish it.

You compete over wealth, so you destroy its owners.

You claim to protect nations, then leave them without people, development, or a future.

The miserable mind does not seek a solution because it feels no sense of value outside the crisis.

It needs an enemy to appear as a leader, a conspiracy to justify its failure, a war to conceal its impotence, and a frightened public so that no one asks:

What have you created besides destruction?

The Heads That Ripened

Al-Hajjaj said in his notorious threat:

“I see heads that have ripened and are ready for harvest.”

He saw human beings as fruit for the sword.

But history does not need another guillotine today, nor another Al-Hajjaj. The world is already crowded with those who master killing but know nothing about life.

What has truly ripened is the corruption of minds, until they have come to require reprogramming that restores logic and knowledge to them and cleanses them of superstition and absurdity.

Their lies have matured until they have been exposed. Their mistakes have grown until propaganda can no longer conceal them. Their wars have reached such a degree of absurdity that the ordinary person has become wiser than those who make decisions in their name.

It is not heads that are ready for harvest, but ideas that are no longer fit to govern human life.

The time has come for the fall of superstition dressed in a formal suit.

The time has come to expose the ignorance speaking from behind a podium.

And the time has come for the end of authority that understands leadership only as issuing orders, and dialogue only as waiting for others to fall silent.

The Law of Life

Change is not an exceptional occurrence in the universe, but its enduring law.

Days alternate, nations rise and others fall, ideas are renewed when they wither, and in every age minds emerge that restore to humanity something it has lost.

Renewal is not an automatic appointment set by the clock every hundred years. Change may come sooner or later. What is certain, however, is that corruption is never granted immortality, no matter how deeply rooted it may appear, and that a mind resisting the movement of life eventually becomes a burden that life itself rejects.

Miserable minds may be able to delay the morning.

They may fill the sky with smoke, the earth with graves, and screens with lies.

They may imagine that the fear they have created is proof of their survival.

But they cannot abolish the law of change.

The earth is not cleansed by guillotines, nor repaired by missiles.

It is cleansed by truth when it exposes minds no longer fit to govern life; by knowledge when it drives out superstition; by consciences when they recover their courage; and by human beings when they refuse to remain fuel for the vanity of others.

The earth has been filled with injustice and burdened by grim faces and miserable minds.

But their approaching end does not mean uprooting their owners. It means uprooting their ability to mislead humanity and control its destiny.

When the harvest comes, heads will not fall.

What will fall are the eras that carried them for so long upon humanity’s shoulders.

In the end, the ugliness of minds does not remain confined within heads. It rises to the surface of faces, however hard they try to beautify themselves, leaving them grim and extinguished, tainted by a stupidity astonishing to behold.