Musa at the Sea: "Indeed, With Me Is My Lord"
An army behind, a sea ahead, six hundred thousand terrified people in between — and one man's absolute certainty, one staff, one command.
They left Egypt in the night — generations of enslaved people following Musa عليه السلام toward a freedom they could not yet picture. By morning, Pharaoh's fury had mustered every chariot in the kingdom.
At sunrise the two groups saw each other (26:60-61). Ahead of the believers: the sea, cold and closed. Behind them: the dust of the greatest army on earth. The people said what anyone would say:
"Inna lamudrakun — we are surely overtaken!"
And Musa answered with two words that measure the whole distance between fear and iman:
"Kalla! — No! Indeed, with me is my Lord; He will guide me" (26:62).
Not "we will be fine." Not a plan. A Person: ma'iya Rabbi — with me is my Lord. The same certainty his mother had when she placed him, an infant, into this same river-and-sea world with nothing but Allah's promise (28:7).
Then the command came: "Strike the sea with your staff" (26:63). A piece of wood against an ocean — deliberately absurd, so that no one could ever say the staff did it.
"And it parted, and each portion was like a great towering mountain." Walls of standing water, a dry road on the seabed (20:77). The nation walked through the inside of a miracle.
Pharaoh followed — of course he did; hearts that harden read even miracles as tricks. The sea closed over him mid-sentence, as he tried at last to believe when belief could no longer be chosen (10:90-91).
On the far shore stood a free people who had learned the lesson the ummah still fasts for on Ashura: no pursuer, no dead end, no empire outranks "with me is my Lord."
Sources: Quran 26:52–68; 20:77–79; 10:90