The Ink, the Poem, the Witness
Wednesday, 13 August 2025
God swears an oath in the Qur'an not by the sword, not by the throne — but by a pen. This final session of the series turns to those who record rather than speak from a platform: writers, poets, eulogists, anyone whose ink carries the name of God or the Ahl al-Bayt, peace be upon them, into the world. The Qur'an opens one chapter with exactly this oath — "Nun. By the pen and what they inscribe!" — and the tradition holds that the Pen was among the very first things God created, told simply: "Write." The session builds toward a single claim: the Qur'an itself is not a passive text but a living witness, one that will testify for or against those who carried it. "Whoever puts it in front of him, it will lead him to Paradise; and whoever puts it behind him, it will drive him to the Fire." Words, in this framework, are not weightless. Recording angels attend every utterance — "he does not utter a single word without a ready observer beside him" — and Imam al-Sadiq, peace be upon him, describes a single sentence capable of raising someone through Paradise's ranks, or dropping them into the Fire for seventy years. This is why the session insists the trust of clarification does not end with the speaker. Whoever writes, composes, or publishes in the name of this tradition inherits the same covenant Imam Ali, peace be upon him, names for scholars — and will be questioned not only on what they wrote, but why, and what it woke in the people who received it. When your words are finally called to the witness stand, what will they actually testify to? What the evening covers The oath by the Pen. Why the Qur'an swears by an instrument of writing rather than a symbol of power. The Pen as the first of all creation. Its link, in the narrations of the Imams, to the intellect itself. The Qur'an as a living witness. Not a fixed text, but one that testifies for or against those who carried it. The weighed word. How recording angels and the scale of judgement apply as much to poets and writers as to preachers.
In this session
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اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ عَلَى مُحَمَّدٍ وَآلِهِ، وَأَدِمْ بِالْقُرْآنِ صَلَاحَ ظَاهِرِنَا، وَاحْجُبْ بِهِ خَطَرَاتِ الْوَسَاوِسِ عَنْ صِحَّةِ ضَمَائِرِنَا، وَاغْسِلْ بِهِ دَرَنَ قُلُوبِنَا وَعَلَائِقَ أَوْزَارِنَا، وَاجْمَعْ بِهِ مُنْتَشَرَ أُمُورِنَا، وَأَرْوِ بِهِ فِي مَوْقِفِ الْعَرْضِ عَلَيْكَ ظَمَأَ هَوَاجِرِنَا، وَاكْسُنَا بِهِ حُلَلَ الْأَمَانِ يَوْمَ الْفَزَعِ الْأَكْبَرِ فِي نُشُورِنَا
O God, bless Muhammad and his Household and through the Qur'an make permanent the rightness of our outward selves, veil the ideas of confusing thoughts from the soundness of our innermost minds, wash away the dirt of our hearts and the ties of our heavy sins, gather our scattered affairs, quench the thirst of our burning heat in the standing place of the presentation to You, and clothe us in the robes of security on the Day of the Greatest Terror at our uprising!
Sahifa Sajjadiyyah, Prayer 42: His Supplication upon Completing a Reading of the Qur'an, Verse 12
