I went out my front door one fine morning just as my neighbour, a Pakistani student, came out of his. We walked together to the bus stop where we would catch the bus to the university. His bloodshot eyes were swollen and his shoulders drooped. He walked with a stoop.
“Are you OK? What’s wrong?” I said.
“We lost our beloved president, Zia ul-Haq,” he informed me. “He passed away in a plane crash yesterday.”
He looked like he might start crying again, but that was not the reason I didn’t know what to say. I did manage, “I’m sorry,” which was not true. Actually, I was confused. I knew of Zia ul-Haq’s death and was looking forward to talking to my friends about it. General Zia ul-Haq was a brutal tyrant who had oppressed his nation. Why was this Pakistani man so distraught? Should he not have been ecstatic that the dictator was dead? I wondered whether he felt the need to put on a show of bereavement, but for whose benefit? There were no other Pakistanis around who could report back to his homeland that he might be delighted with the tyrant’s untimely departure. Was he related to Zia ul-Haq? Surely he would have acknowledged that closeness, rather than just “our beloved president.” Did he really love him?
It was not until a few years later, while watching a documentary on the life of Stalin, that a possible explanation for the Pakistani student’s devastation at the death of a brutal dictator came to mind. The Soviet people had suffered grievously under Stalin’s psychopathic cruelty. Yet when he died, they were beside themselves with grief. The queues of weeping, bent-over people, dragged their concrete feet along in hope of paying their final respects.
I am no psychologist. But what if — I tried to make sense of it all — what if they simply could not behave as if their tyrant was no longer there? What if they were lost, disoriented, adrift without the only reference point their lives had ever had? What if, with the brutal tyrant as their only provider, the controller of life and death, the only love they ever knew was love for their almighty tyrant? What if they genuinely loved Stalin? What if my Pakistani student neighbour genuinely did love Zia ul-Haq? Their pitiful grieving for the passing-away of the one person singularly responsible for all the misery of their lives is incongruous, yet it could make sense. Tears for a tyrant could make sense, no matter how much blood he had on his hands.
But how is one to explain tears for a terrorist? By this I do not mean the Muslim world’s going to pieces (the silence of Saudi Arabia speaking volumes) over the death of arch-terrorist Qasim Suleimani — one expects nothing less — but the Western mainstream media and practically every politician falling over themselves to tell us what a great tragedy the killing of Suleimani is. “The Dangers posed by the Killing of Qassem Suleimani” headlines The New Yorker, not “The Dangers averted.” Yes, he has blood on his hands, they all feel obliged to mention, but very quickly move onto: one, the illegality of President Trump’s attack on Suleimani; and two, the dire consequences that will follow from such reckless action.
The spectacle of Britain’s two arch-sycophants to Muslims, Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway, outdoing each other in their outrage, Galloway even calling the terrorist general “a diplomat”, quickly lost its freak-show appeal. In the US, Nancy Pelosi is desperate to outdo even her own Trump-impeachment fiasco. Now her feelings are hurt because the President that she had indicted failed to consult her first. With all this Western outpouring of respect for “Iran’s top General (capital G)” and the quick burying of his CV as a global terrorist mastermind, brutal quasher of the Iranian protests, controller of several extra-territorial terrorist militias ravaging the Middle East and assorted killer outfits around the world, are they ingratiating themselves to this dead man? Surely they don’t think Iran is going to come after them for failing to virtue-signal appropriately. But then, they are that kind of people and this is that kind of time.
My Pakistani student neighbour and the Soviet mourners shedding their tears for their respective tyrants can be understood. One can sympathise with them. There is even, in some sense, something pure about them. But most of the Western politicians and talking heads and celebrities and useful idiots so upset at Qasim Suleimani’s long-overdue demise have never heard of the Iranian Quds Force leader until his killing, and would not have cared about it one jot, but for the identity of the one who ordered the killing: the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
So deep is their hatred of Trump that Suleimani borders on a hero, save for Islamo-sycophants Corbyn and Galloway, of course, for whom the terror boss is a hero. Had Qasim Suleimani been killed, taken out, eliminated, wasted, by anyone other than President Trump, we would have heard all about just what an evil son-of-a-bitch Suleimani was, and of course there would be no question about the necessity of killing him and, in any case, what could unstable, dire straits Iran do about it? Nothing. They wouldn’t dare after a blow like that. The howls and threats coming from the Ayatollahs and their remaining generals would be called out for the impotent blustering that it is. Muslims always talk in hyperbole and threaten to open the gates of Hell, etc., etc. We all know this. But Trump, not anybody else, Donald Trump, killed the world’s top terrorist, and therefore it was an unconscionable thing to do, therefore World War III looms. This is very likely a great part of the explanation, especially as far as the US is concerned.
But there is something that most social critics overlook, and that is the depth to which the West has been dhimmified. All those who object to Trump’s killing of Suleimani are terrified of Iran’s response (many who hate Trump even hope for it). Every journalist, with alarmed expression, wants to know where Iran will strike. It is as if it is not possible to prevent Iran from attacking, or as if the West is incapable of fighting back should it be attacked. In other words, Suleimani, along with all Islam’s jihad terrorists, should be left to get on with what they do and we should keep our heads down and go about our business as if none of it is happening. And if they bomb or strike or attack us, then they bomb or strike or attack us. That is all.
It doesn’t even cross such people’s minds that we could fight back. To them, self-defence is not even a concept. The fundamental right of self-defence that has for so long been denied Israel is now being denied the entire Dar al-Harb. They are terrified of what Iran will rain down upon us for having the temerity to strike the terrorist who had been striking us. At the same time, they are chastising us for not knowing our place, for behaving out of turn, for acting above our station. We are supposed to feel ourselves subdued, as they so evidently already do. This is precisely the position of the dhimmi. The dhimmi may not strike a Muslim, and should a Muslim pummel a dhimmi with blows, the dhimmi may not block or parry the blows, but must take them without the slightest resistance. He may, however, apologise and beg the Muslim for forgiveness. For a dhimmi to dare to fight back is to bring an even more terrible fate upon himself, exactly as the Shari’a stipulates. We have not witnessed dhimmis shedding tears for a terrorist (their Muslim masters did that), but the dhimmi response to Qasim Suleimani’s death over the past six days demonstrates to Muslims that they can be victorious through terror, exactly as their prophet had boasted.