On 31 July 2024, the Shia community was shaken by the news of the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. He was killed by a bomb targeting the room where he was staying as a special guest at the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi. If the assassination was criminal, it was even more so to martyr him so dishonorably while he was a guest in one of the most hospitable countries in the world. It was a hard blow to the anti-Zionist resistance, but not a devastating one.

Haniyeh’s death was painful. He was a man of immense political, military, and spiritual value to the anti-Zionist resistance—often labeled by the United States as ‘terrorist’ to justify its killings. Haniyeh’s death resembled the atmosphere of grief over the loss of a role model, just as the death of General Qasem Soleimani, Commander of the Quds Force and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was received in Iran in 2020.

Nearly a month before Haniyeh’s assassination, I was walking through the Caracas Book Fair alongside some Iranian officials from the Cultural Secretariat of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic, who had just learned that I had been accepted to study at a university in Iran. As we walked, I voiced a concern that had weighed on me for year—exactly eleven years, since that sad March 5, 2013, when President Hugo Chávez passed away from an aggressive, disproportionate cancer. In my view and that of many others, it was deliberately induced because his death was deemed convenient.

I’m interested in understanding something: how and why, when one of these leaders is killed, ten or even a hundred more emerge? And why doesn’t the struggle falter or wane? They mourn, they show their deep sorrow, yet they are not discouraged, they don’t divide into factions, they do not disperse.

I expected an explanation about how they organized the command structure of the Resistance organizations—a horizontal model not centered on personalistic leadership, allowing for another to be ready to take a leader’s place in the event of death or arrest, but no.

‘We are like this because we love Imam Husayn,’ replied the official who spoke Spanish.

‘Imam Husayn?’

‘And who is he?’ I asked.

‘Look it up,’ he told me with a serene smile.

The next day I returned to the National Art Gallery in search of a book that would tell me about this man named Imam Husayn. I found a small book, 132 pages long, with a black and red cover and titled Imam Husayn (P): The Light That Did Not Go Out.

The pages briefly but intensely recount the events of Ashura and Karbala. It describes the massacre of Husayn, the second grandson of the prophet Muhammad, at the hands of the corrupt figures and traitors of his time. They claimed to defend Islam and a God who, if He was in their likeness, would lack all sense of compassion or mercy.

It took me two days to read those 132 pages. I read through nightmares and a profound shock over an event that, had it not occurred, there would not be such a deep foundation for the struggle against oppression within the Islamic Shia  community. It would also not have endured in memory through time.  It is the same struggle being waged today by Iran, by Hezbollah in Lebanon, by the Houthi resistance in Yemen, and by Hamas and the people of Palestine, even though the majority of Palestinians are Sunni Muslims.

After those two days, I reflected on how difficult it is for humanity to learn and sustain essential lessons over time, no matter how many virtuous men and women sacrifice themselves for them.

We Christians have as our model a leader who dies in the cruelest way, in order to send a message: Jesus Christ. He knew where, how, when, and at whose hands he was going to die. Shia Muslims have Imam Husayn. This made me think of how often a man must appear—willing to offer the best of himself and endure the unthinkable—just so that humanity might reflect, and see through the example, that it can evolve.  Yet, every time, in the material world, insult, vileness, and disloyalty seem to prevail, appointing and rewarding kings, caliphs, emirs, princes, and sheikhs.

Before killing Imam Husayn in Karbala (modern-day Iraq), they surrounded him, denied him water in the middle of the desert, threatened his entire family, mocked him, offered him life in exchange for submission and renunciation of Islam. They  also murdered his young son in his arms while he courageously called them to reflection. Finally,  after all that cruelty, the Imam’s body was trampled by horses because they considered him incorruptible and disobedient. No act of horror seemed too extreme to them, as recounted in this account—which contains no fiction—and which was attested to by a woman named Zainab, the Imam’s sister, one of the few survivors of that attack on the family of prophet Muhammad. The Prophet of the newest religion with Abrahamic roots: Islam.

‘By God, I have never seen such persistence. His sons have been killed, along with his family members and his followers, and yet he is as brave as ever and does not let his spirit falter.

When the soldiers attack him, he responds with his sword and scatters them left and right like goats when the wolf falls upon them,’ I read in the book written by Humayd ibn Muslim, chronicler of the Battle of Karbala, writing about Imam Husayn.

As I read, so many parallels came to my mind. Everything seemed so clear. Although Husayn is perhaps not just anyone, what happened to him and his family in Karbala bears a striking resemblance to Venezuela in the midst of the severe crisis that ravaged its people between 2014 and 2022, and which the people endured and remained standing even through a global pandemic in the mix.

Karbala reminds me so much of Cuba because of its blockade and isolation for over 63 years. They are also similar in how, despite this, they were able to promote literacy and provide healthcare through their doctors around the world.

Karbala reminds me so much of Iran, blocked and isolated from the Western financial system since 1979 simply for wanting to do things their own way and openly and directly identifying the enemy and oppressor: Israel and the U.S.

Karbala reminds me of Yemen, whose humanitarian crisis goes hand in hand with an unparalleled will to resist and support those who resist.

Karbala reminds me so much of any woman who speaks out against abuse, and it reminds me of Palestine, whose ways of dying and living—as horrendous as they are inspiring—seem insufficient to prompt decisive action from the international community, as if Palestinians deserved to pay for all the sins and crimes committed by humanity.

The only difference between our present and Karbala is that ours is a story that repeats itself due to the effects of the ignorance instilled by the oppressors, while the massacre of Karbala was something that was meant to happen. It had a spiritual and historical justification:

First, so that many like myself—not being Muslim, Arab, or Iranian—might today be moved by its story—which is no myth—and that furthermore, I am drawn to writing about it, after feeling a pain passed down from generation to generation that makes me cherish walking and living among those in Iran who know how to give their best, even while drowning in that sorrow.

Second, so that between 120 and 200 million Shia Muslims are capable of anything in daily life, in peace and in war, to defend their faith, their principles, and the teachings of Ahlul Bayt (The House of the Prophet) regarding the oppressors-oppressed dichotomy, even if the oppressed are not their own children, and even more so if they are the children of Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Africa, and Palestine.