Mawlana Ali Miyan Nadwi (Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, may Allah sanctify his secret) is invited to meet King Faisal (may Allah have mercy on him).

The guards show Mawlana Ali Miyan in, and he enters the meeting area in the palace to meet the king. Mawlana looks around, not cursorily, but closely, as if in wonderment. The king inquires as to why he looked around with such amazement. Mawlana answers, "We too once had a king who ruled over the (present) India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Nepal and other places, and out of the fifty-two years of his rule he spent twenty on the horseback. Muslims, in his time, enjoyed freedom and happiness. Life was easy for them. Yet, the king was such that he wore patched clothes. He scribed the Qur'an and knitted caps to earn his living, and used stand crying before his Lord in night vigils. Those were the times when simplicity and poverty characterised the lives of the rulers, and contentment and fulfillment was the masses' share. Today, on seeing this palace of yours I wonder how times have changed! Today, our kings and rulers enjoy the riches of this world when the Muslims are rendered homeless in Palestine, their blood having lost all worth in Kashmir, and stripped of their identity in the middle-east. Today, when I stepped into your palace, I got lost in the bewildering comparison,” Ali Miyan falls silent.

Tears are streaming down the king's face. It is his turn now. Soon the streaming tears turn into profused weeping. The king is heard weeping! The guards, all worried, rush in to see what the matter is. The king gestures them to leave. He now addresses the Mawlana: "those kings were thus because they had advisers like you. (I wish) you keep coming here and advising us, the weaker ones!"

King Faisal (may Allah have mercy on him), was at least one of those few lucky rulers who valued the advice of the learned, the ahl-e ilm and the ahl-ullah! We, in the present times of spiritual poverty, are being ruled by people who, let alone paying heed to the advice of the learned, even lack the discernment to recognise the people of understanding. Indeed, a time for us to weep.