I will never forget that day when I went to see a Pakistani ophthalmologist to treat a severe eye infection, and he asked me for a sample of my tears to examine them for a more accurate diagnosis.

I sat on the veranda, gripped by fear, an anxiety as unbearable as a single straight hair in the eye of a person, whose hands have been amputated. I kept asking myself again and again; Will the test result expose my grief? Will he find in it that curly-haired Palestinian child? Or the image of the scattered corpses of children on burned tents? Or that emaciated refugee moaning in pain, beside him his widowed daughter with her six children, eating flour mixed with sand, brought by her bloodied brother wounded, under bombardment and fire and humiliation? What if he discovers my anger toward countries neighboring states, that restrained relief and even took part in that siege?

Surely, he will see in my tears what I fear: the image of the Sudanese woman, clutching her child, surrounded by the shadows of monsters, who tried to kill him and violate her honor, and the scene of the Sudanese man being trampled alive, from sole to crown.

Will he be able to classify types of tears? What if he ranks them from tears of anger, down to tears of hope? Then he will record my anger about what Syria has become, and learn of the plight of the free women of East Turkestan and the wounds of Indian Muslims. Perhaps the tears of hope I shed in tahajjud, begging Allah (swt) for help for His Deen, might soften what that doctor sees.

At last I arrived at the hospital to see him for the result. He looked at me for a while, as if I were a history exposing many crimes against Muslims.

I surprised him with a question: Doesn’t Pakistan possess one of the largest armies in the world in numbers and readiness? Doesn’t it have a nuclear deterrent that gives it prestige and deterrence? What about its strategic location between China, India, and Iran as a gateway to Central Asia that grants it political and economic influence, in addition to a relative self-sufficiency in defense industries? They are cards of economic and military power that have not even been played to pressure regimes hostile to Muslims. Do you know why, doctor? It is because the Pakistani regime, like our other regimes, is subject to international pressures and especially to America. Should we simply shrug our shoulders as you do now?!

Isn’t it high time after years of wandering that we reorient our compass as Muslims to when we were great and possessed sovereignty under a just Khaleefah (Caliph) who rules by the Book of Allah (swt) and the Sunnah of His Messenger (saw)? We are a people Whom Allah (swt) has ennobled by Islam, why then do we accept such baseness and the declared war today on the Deen and Muslims? Here are bodies violated and blood flowing and declared schemes for a new Abrahamic religion; temples are being built and idols are returning us to ages of polytheism and disbelief!

Forgive me, doctor, I do not want treatment, my anguish is not healed by manufactured pills, or numbing injections, but by a radical solution that leaves no room for tears to be shed.

We want a Khilafah Rashidah (Rightly-Guided Caliphate) on the Methodology of the Prophethood that restores the Ummah’s dignity, exacts retribution from its enemies, aids its oppressed, and establishes justice among its people. We want a dignified, awe-inspiring Khilafah (Caliphate) that will shake the foundations and thrones of the pharaohs of our age. Yes, I want tears of joy.