It is the day of ‘Ashura.

The land of Karbala shudders beneath the weight of the atrocity it bears. A boy no older than thirteen lies motionless on the sand, his limbs twisted where the hooves struck. A severed arm, still gripping an empty waterskin, rests a few paces away. Near the tents, a shallow mound rises, a hastily buried treasure – someone returned to the earth far before his time.

And at the center of it all – alone, bleeding from a thousand wounds, surrounded on all sides by spears and swords – stands Husayn ibn Ali (a). His back is bent with grief. His eyes have lost their sight. His lips are parched. He has carried the bodies of his son, his brother, his closest companions. Around him, the thousands-strong enemy cheers.

If victory is measured in numbers, in weapons, and in survival, then Husayn (a) is the obvious loser of the battle of Karbala.

Clearly, something deeper is at work here. It is the worldly, materialistic system of accounting that measures success solely by the arithmetic of soldiers, of lives lost and survival secured. There is a different calculus at work that recognizes Husayn (a) as the only true victor of Karbala: the divine calculus. Husayn (a) is victorious because he stood where God willed him to stand, and he fell when it served the divine mission. He did his responsibility and left the result up to Allah. And Allah took his sincerity, the strength of his faith and his sacrifice, and blessed it with eternal beauty and radiance. He granted Husayn (a) and his companions the highest levels of paradise and made his movement bear fruit for centuries to come. This is the divine calculus. Not who survived, but who stood for what. Not who fell, but who sold themselves and all they possess to God:

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ ٱشْتَرَىٰ مِنَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ أَنفُسَهُمْ وَأَمْوَٰلَهُم بِأَنَّ لَهُمُ ٱلْجَنَّةَ
“Indeed Allah has bought from the faithful their souls and their possessions for paradise to be theirs.”

(al-Tawbah 9: 111)

In the Qur’anic perspective, victory is not about physical outcomes; it is about gaining eternal success:

أَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلْجَنَّةِ هُمُ ٱلْفَآئِزُونَ
It is the inhabitants of paradise who are the successful ones.

(al-Ḥashr 59: 20)

The divine calculus doesn’t encourage us to completely disregard the physical capability of the enemy or refuse to cultivate our own material strength. That aspect is important, too. But the crucial point is this: our reliance must never be upon our muscles and missiles. Rather, we must rely solely on Allah. Like David facing Goliath with naught but a sling, we must recognize that it is God’s will alone that determines victory from defeat, success from failure. That our job is only to do our responsibility; the result is in His hands alone.

Zaynab (s) knew this. When she stood in Yazid’s court mere days after witnessing the massacre of her entire family, she spoke words that reverberate with lofty truth to this day: “I saw nothing but beauty.” She was not in denial. She was narrating Karbala through the lens of the divine.

If we are to be true Husaynis, true Zaynabis, we must learn to see the world with this same lens.

Turn this lens onto Palestine. By all worldly metrics, the Palestinians have been defeated: their lands plundered, their people slaughtered by the thousands. But if strength is defined by who can kill most, then Husayn (a) was weak (God forbid!). If humiliation is defined by loss of life, then every prophet was humiliated. What we see in Palestine is the opposite of defeat and humiliation. We see a strength that can only come from faith. We see children losing their entire families and turning to the sky, saying حسبنا الله (hasbunAllah – Allah is sufficient for us). We see a nation denied every basic human right standing proud with dignity, refusing to bow down to the tyrants even as their existence is threatened.

And on the other side, we see the same Yazidi evil. The cowardice of hiding behind iron domes and bomb shelters. The humiliation of attempting to escape at the first sign of someone fighting back. The despicability of murdering journalists, bombing hospitals, shooting children lining up for food. Those who interpret events from the divine calculus know that ultimate victory is reserved for the believers. They are not afraid when the mightiest empires decide to drop bombs on them. The world urges them to back down, to be afraid of the might of the Americans and the Zionists! But their response is grounded in calmness, in strength, and in conviction:

ٱلَّذِينَ قَالَ لَهُمُ ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّ ٱلنَّاسَ قَدْ جَمَعُوا۟ لَكُمْ فَٱخْشَوْهُمْ فَزَادَهُمْ إِيمَـٰنًۭا وَقَالُوا۟ حَسْبُنَا ٱللَّهُ وَنِعْمَ ٱلْوَكِيلُ
Those to whom the people said, ‘All the people have gathered against you, so fear them.’ That only increased them in faith, and they said, ‘Allah is sufficient for us, and He is an excellent trustee.’

(Aal-e-Imran 3: 173)

The divine calculus is not naive. It does not ignore pain or excuse injustice. But it sees beyond the moment. It sees reality as it truly is: that this world has a Master, and He has power over all things. It sees what is incomprehensible to the worldly arithmetic: that the corpse of a martyr is not a sign of failure; it is the very mark of success.