Between elephants and birds: The illusion of imperial invincibility

The narrative contained in Surah Al-Fil (105: 1–5), known as the Surah of “The Elephant”, remains one of the most symbolic passages of the Qur’an when it comes to reflecting on power, arrogance and the historical limits of domination.

Far from being merely a religious episode, the Surah offers a powerful interpretative key for understanding cycles of the rise and decline of empires. Its central message is simple and incisive: no empire is invincible when it distances itself from justice.

According to Islamic tradition, the Yemeni governor Abraha marched against the Kaaba, in Mecca, leading an army that included elephants, the imposing instruments of war and the ultimate symbol of power at the time.

The campaign aimed to impose religious and political hegemony over the region. The outcome narrated in the Surah is well known: thousands of birds, the ababil, hurled small stones that defeated the invading army, transforming apparent military superiority into historical humiliation.

The lesson is that imperial arrogance carries within itself the seeds of its own ruin. This reading resonates directly with the present. The world is witnessing the erosion of an international order founded on the supremacy of a few and the subordination of many.

Modern imperialism, especially the one articulated around the United States, sustains an architecture of power based on coercion, threat and the idea of absolute power.

Nuclear aircraft carriers, military bases spread across the world and state-of-the-art weapons technologies play, in our time, the same symbolic role as those elephants: projecting the image of a force that cannot be questioned.

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Leaders who operate under the logic of coercion, threat and submission, such as the narcissistic president of the United States, Donald Trump, become symbols of a paradigm in crisis of a supremacy that believes itself unquestionable.

An empire that loses legitimacy in the eyes of the peoples of the world begins a process of erosion that no weapons technology is capable of reversing. Power sustained solely by force reveals, over time, its own fragility.

In this context of the erosion of imperial legitimacy, one of the symbolic pillars that for decades sustained the geopolitical order in the Middle East also crumbles: the idea of the military invincibility of Israel.

Recent events, however, shatter this perception. The persistence of Palestinian resistance, even under extreme conditions, reveals that the much-vaunted military supremacy of Israel does not automatically translate into political victory or lasting moral legitimacy.

Resistance movements, among them Hamas, demonstrate that history does not end with the asymmetry of weapons, but extends through the resilience of peoples who refuse to disappear.

This process is also connected to the emergence of new centres of power that challenge the unipolar logic established after the end of the Cold War, in which the Islamic Republic of Iran occupies a central place in this transformation.

Heir to a long Persian civilisational tradition, marked by millennia of resistance to invasions and external domination, the Islamic Republic has become a regional actor whose relevance transcends the military sphere.

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Its recent trajectory reflects a historical capacity for strategic adaptation in the face of sanctions, isolation and diplomatic pressure, demonstrating that sovereignty is not sustained solely by military force, but by internal cohesion, historical memory and a national political project.

As in the narrative evoked by the Surah of “The Elephant”, what is at stake is not merely the ability to win battles, but the legitimacy to sustain projects of power over time, for empires frequently confuse technological superiority with historical permanence.

The “birds” of the Qur’anic narrative can be understood as metaphors for the historical forces that challenge unjust hegemonies: international awareness, popular movements, the right of peoples to self-determination, the emergence of new multipolar configurations, and the persistence of collective memories that refuse to be erased.

The Surah of “The Elephant” thus remains a mirror and a warning. It reminds us that history does not belong to empires nor to repugnant figures such as Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, who believe themselves eternal, but to the peoples who persist.

When legitimacy dissolves, power discovers its limits. And it is at this point that collective memory reclaims its voice, transforming resistance into a horizon and justice into a possible destiny.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.