It hurts me to hear myself whisper *farewell* before your radiant dharih, O Amirul Mumineen. The word caught in my throat like a thorn. For how can one say goodbye to a presence that has become the marrow of his soul? As I pressed my forehead to the silver lattice, the tears rolled down freely. Not as ordinary tears but as drops drawn from a well deep inside. A strange kind of healing eye-drop poured outward instead of inward. Washing my vision from the heart to the eye rather than the other way round. Each drop felt like a shard of light tunnelling from within. A river of grief and renewal that no surgeon could prescribe. I thought of Celine Dion’s lament; “it hurts me to hear you say goodbye”, and knew she sang of lovers parted by distance. But this hurt was heavier yet eternal. This was not the parting of two hearts of flesh but the wrenching of a soul from its compass. Farewell here was not a word but a wound, and in that wound, I felt your voice, whispering lessons I feared I might forget once I stepped away from Najaf.

The lamps glowed golden above me, the incense curled like sighs, and the murmur of pilgrims pressed against my ears: an ocean of yearning. Some begged for sick children, others for debts to be paid, others simply whispered their names into the steel, as if the shrine itself were a ledger of hope. Yes it is. But my heart was restless. I had not come only to beg, but to remember. As I stood there, three great battles rose before my eyes like mountains: Jamal, Siffin, and Nahrawan. And in those mountains, I saw three faces that continue to plague humanity: the arrogant idiot, the compound ignorant, and the pious fool. They were not strangers to you, O Ali. You faced them directly, endured them painfully, and left us with your testimony through *Nahjul Balagha*.

At Jamal, arrogance took the field. The city of Basra convulsed under banners of rebellion. Those who had once pledged allegiance to you turned against you, not because they doubted your justice but because their pride could not bow. They marched claiming to avenge Uthman, though their own hands were complicit. They demanded a justice they themselves had abandoned. You unmasked them with piercing words: *“By Allah, they are demanding a right which they themselves abandoned, and seeking a blood which they themselves shed.”* This was arrogance wrapped in the costume of principle. The camel itself became their pulpit, its litter their stage, its tether the rope of discord.

You instructed your soldiers with restraint: *“Do not fight them unless they begin; for by the grace of Allah you are upon an argument against them.”* You would not let rage spoil truth. And when the dust cleared, Jamal stood as proof that arrogant idiots may inflame nations, but their contradictions always betray them.

Yet Jamal is not dead. It walks in our world. I see it in palaces and parliaments, where leaders strut in motorcades instead of camels, clothed not in robes of justice but in the vanity of office. They mistake applause for legitimacy, pomp for virtue, noise for wisdom. The arrogant idiot has never left us. He simply changes costumes.

Then Siffin unfolded, bitter and long, on the banks of Euphrates. Your army pressed forward, victory near, truth radiant. And then came the deceit: Qur’ans raised on spears. Pages fluttered in the desert wind. Men cried out, “Let us judge by the Book of Allah!” You saw the trick instantly, declaring: *“This is a word of truth by which falsehood is intended.”* Yet your soldiers, shallow in understanding, were swayed. They forced you to halt, to accept arbitration, when justice was within grasp.

This was compound ignorance. A man who admits his ignorance can learn. But a man who baptizes his ignorance as wisdom will never change. At Siffin, men mistook paper for principle, cover for content, performance for substance. They silenced the living Qur’an with the lifeless pages of it. You lamented their blindness in your sermons: *“They have drowned in ignorance, wandering in misguidance. They have turned away from the truth.”*

Compound ignorance is the deadliest poison. It thrives wherever people mistake slogans for solutions, propaganda for principle, appearance for reality. And I tremble, for Siffin is alive in my age. I see it in every society where lies are swallowed because they wear God’s name, where wisdom is dismissed because noise is easier to digest. The compound ignorant chants louder than the wise, and the crowd follows, as if sound could replace substance. Siffin breathes in every nation where deception becomes doctrine and the people clap for their own chains.

And then Nahrawan, the most bitter wound. The Kharijites, once your own men, turned against you. They prayed until their foreheads bore scars, fasted until their bodies were hollow, recited Qur’an until their voices cracked. Yet their hearts were stone. Their slogan rang out: *“There is no judgment but Allah’s!”* And you answered: *“A word of truth distorted into falsehood.”* For their piety was poison. Their zeal was cruelty. Their devotion was rebellion. They convinced themselves that killing you was a service to God.

These were the pious fools. They worship without wisdom, devotion without justice, ritual without compassion. You described them: *“They recite the Qur’an, but it does not go beyond their throats; their faith does not penetrate their hearts.”* Their prayers did not make them righteous; their fasting did not make them merciful. They became Satan’s sharpest sword, their false piety sharper than any spear.

And I tremble again, for Nahrawan too survives. The pious fool lives in every age, in every land where religion is worn as costume, where zeal is louder than justice, where rituals mask cruelty. He fasts but cheats, prays but oppresses, chants but kills. He mistakes ablution for absolution, prostration for purification, memorization for righteousness. He kneels on prayer mats but tramples the orphan. He chants verses but starves the widow. He prays in mosques but kills in God’s name. The pious fool is alive, and perhaps more dangerous now than ever.

O Imam, Jamal, Siffin, Nahrawan. Arrogance, ignorance, false piety. These were not accidents of your time. They are eternal illnesses. You faced them with patience, justice,  and endurance until your beard was stained with your own blood in prayer. And yet your endurance was not despair. It was  a lesson. At Jamal, you taught us that arrogance disguised as leadership destroys communities. At Siffin, you taught us that ignorance multiplied by cowardice strangles justice. At Nahrawan, you taught us that piety without wisdom is Satan’s sharpest sword.

You warned us: *“Truth is heavy, but falsehood is lighter than straw.”* You reminded us: *“Do not obey a leader who leads you astray, for obedience to the created is rebellion to the Creator.”* You declared: *“The people are the enemies of what they do not know.”*

So how can I say farewell to you, when your words refuse to let me leave? Najaf does not release its visitors with empty hands. It gives mirrors that are harsh and unrelenting. In those mirrors, I saw myself trembling. For what is the use of cursing Jamal if arrogance hides in my own chest? What is the use of condemning Siffin if I refuse to learn? What is the use of mocking Nahrawan if my rituals lack categorical imperitive? Your life is not story but standard, not memory but mirror.

When I kissed the steel, I knew tears were not enough. To leave with sorrow alone would be betrayal. To leave with resolve is fidelity. And so I pledge, O Ali, that I will carry your lessons into the struggles of my own time. I will fight arrogance with humility, ignorance with knowledge, false piety with justice. I will remember that every age has its Jamal, its Siffin, its Nahrawan, and that the only true farewell to you is to fight them again.

And to my fellow activists I say: beware. If even Imam Ali, the purest of souls, was not immune to the arrows, daggers, and betrayals of the arrogant idiot, the compound ignorant, and the pious fool, then what of us? If the Commander of the Faithful was scarred by their schemes, what movement of ours can claim safety? Vigilance is not optional. Discernment is not luxury. Naivete is not innocence. It is a suicide.

Remember how revolutions rot when arrogance, ignorance, and false piety creep inside. Remember how Mensheviks trusted too easily until Bolsheviks hijacked their cause. Remember how truth was silenced by those who shouted the loudest but understood the least. If we are not brutally discerning, brutally honest, brutally circumspect, then we will weep over Najaf only to repeat its tragedies.

Let us, instead, be the generation that breaks the cycle. Let us recognize Jamal whenever arrogance disguises itself as leadership, Siffin whenever ignorance dresses itself as scripture, and Nahrawan whenever piety is wielded as a whip. Let us guard against these enemies first in our own hearts and then in others. For the world has no need of more martyrs slain by preventable folly. What the world needs is vigilant souls who can unmask arrogance, expose ignorance, and strip false piety of its disguise before it strangles the truth again.

This, O Ali, is my farewell before your dharih. Not a goodbye, but a covenant. Not departure, but duty. Not just tears, but resolve.