This is the opening of Faiz's most famous poem, 'Hum Dekhenge' (We Shall Witness), written during the military dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan. It became the defining protest anthem of the era and has since been used at political demonstrations across the subcontinent and beyond.

The power of the verse lies in its extraordinary synthesis of religious vocabulary and revolutionary politics. 'Lauh-e-azal' — the eternal tablet on which all destinies are written in Islamic theology — is here reinterpreted as the tablet on which justice itself is promised. Faiz is saying that the coming of a just world is not merely politically desirable but cosmically inevitable — it is written in the very structure of existence.

This religious framing made the poem simultaneously accessible to devout Muslims (who could read it as a promise of divine justice) and to secular progressives (who could read the 'eternal tablet' as the arrow of history pointing toward justice). This double register is characteristic of Faiz's genius — his poetry builds bridges across political and religious divides by finding universal human values beneath their specific expressions.