Month: May 2026

Empty Treasury, Full Justice by Mohamedarif Mohamed Suleman

In many societies, leadership slowly mutates into a claim on privilege. The title itself begins to mean access: access to better stipends, to closed doors, to a standard of living sealed off from the people being led. The ruler’s house grows taller, his table richer, his distance wider, and this is called authority. For Imam Ali (AS), that equation was upside down. To him, authority was not entitlement but burden, and the first sign that a government had lost its way was when its leaders lived beyond the means of the masses while guarding the public purse as if it were their own.