Today in 1415, an English army led by Henry V defeats a much larger French force near Calais at Azincourt (or Agincourt). A play by Shakespeare will later immortalize the battle: "Gentlemen in England shall think themselves accursed they were not here."

In 1941, a Spaniard walked into the British embassy in Madrid and offered to spy on the Nazis. The British turned him down. So he went to the Germans instead, pretended to be a loyal fascist, and got hired as a German spy. His plan was to lie to them for the rest of the war. It worked better than anyone could have imagined. His name was Juan Pujol García. Before the war he had tried his hand at running a chicken farm and a movie theater. He had no spy training. What he had was a deep hatred of both fascism and communism after the Spanish Civil War, and an incredible imagination. The Germans gave him a codename, invisible ink, money, and orders to go to Britain and recruit spies. He didn't go to Britain. He went to Lisbon, Portugal, and made everything up. Using a tourist guidebook, maps, magazines, newsreels, and a British railway timetable from the library, he wrote long, detailed reports about life in England. Military movements. Morale. Ports. He'd never been there. He made mistakes. He didn't understand British money. He once reported that dockworkers in Glasgow would do anything for a liter of wine. The Germans loved him anyway. Then British codebreakers reading German messages noticed something strange. The Germans were hunting for a convoy that didn't exist, based on a report from some agent in Britain they'd never heard of. The British went looking for this mystery spy. They found Pujol. In 1942 they finally took him on and brought him to London. Now he had real help. MI5 gave him the codename Garbo, after the actress, because they thought he was the greatest actor in the world. Together with his British handler, Pujol built a fake spy network for the Germans. It eventually had 27 imaginary agents. Each had a name, a personality, a job, and a backstory. A Welsh nationalist. A Venezuelan student. A Greek sailor. Some of them recruited their own imaginary sub-agents. When they needed to explain why one agent had gone quiet, they killed him off. They even put a fake obituary in a Liverpool newspaper. The Germans reportedly paid a pension to his widow. Who also didn't exist. Then came D-Day. Hours before the landings, the British let Pujol send a message warning the Germans that the invasion was coming in Normandy. It was timed so it would arrive too late to matter, but it made him look brilliant. Three days later he sent the most important message of his career. Normandy was a trick, he said. The real invasion was still coming, at Calais, led by a huge army under General Patton. That army was fake too. But the Germans believed him. German forces that could have been rushed to Normandy were held back near Calais for weeks, waiting for an attack that never came. The Germans were so grateful they awarded him the Iron Cross. A few months later, King George VI made him a Member of the Order of the British Empire. He's one of the only people known to have been decorated by both sides of the war. After the war, afraid of revenge from surviving Nazis, he faked his own death from malaria in Africa and disappeared to Venezuela, where he lived quietly running a shop. For decades the world thought he was dead. In 1984, a British writer tracked him down. Pujol came back to Normandy for the 40th anniversary of D-Day and met veterans who had landed on the beaches. Some of them thanked him.

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff to Vladimir Putin today: “You talk so much about Trump being a humanitarian, you are a humanitarian also, sir. And I salute that. I commend you.”

In reaction to my previous post, many of you have asked the most painful, human question in all of this: where is the place of mercy? I see the comments, and I feel the weight of such questions. The reason people fiercely disagree on this is because they are viewing it from completely different legal points and moral compasses. In the secular, Western moral compass, mercy is almost a default right for any non-violent crime. The secular world believes that as long as nobody was physically hurt, the state should always rehabilitate, tolerate, or forgive. That is why watching two Bangladeshi nationals, Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Siti Akhtar, face the ultimate penalty feels so violently devoid of mercy to the global audience. Some people are arguing in the comments that they only kissed. For me, there is no substantive proof for that. The Saudi Ministry of Interior convicted them of an immoral sexual act without releasing graphic details. Unless proven by official records, the kissing claim remains a social media rumor that cannot be supported with facts. We have to deal with the legal reality of what the court ruled on. Having said that, I believe we need to understand the Islamic legal compass. In Sharia, mercy is abundant, but it is deeply tied to intent and ignorance. Mercy is for the one who does not know. It is not for the one who knows the location of the boundary and intentionally crosses it to make a mockery of the space. Let’s think of it this way. Imagine a Christian or a Jew somehow bypassed the strict highway checkpoints, entered the mosque, and committed this same act. If they were caught and could genuinely establish ignorance of the theological sacredness of the Haram, the punishment would not be this severe. They would be arrested, aggressively interrogated, likely face jail time, and be permanently deported. The Saudi legal system would treat them as ignorant trespassers who violated public decency and border laws, but not as spiritual traitors. Let’s even bring it closer to the Western moral compass. Think about Vatican City. If a tourist bypasses thousands of hotel rooms in Rome and decides to commit a sexual act right on the main altar of St. Peter's Basilica, do you think the Italian authorities will care about their feelings? They will drag them out, charge them with severe desecration, and ensure the global media ruins their lives. Europe fiercely protects the boundaries of its sacred spaces using its own legal framework, and they will not bend their rules to accommodate emotional entitlement. The fact that Nazrul and Siti were Muslims is what made their situation infinitely worse. As Muslims, they knew what Mecca represents. They knew the theological weight of the sanctuary. They knew that in the Haram, you cannot even pluck a leaf or scare a bird. So when they bypassed private rooms to bring a sexual act into the mosque, the court could not look at them and see ignorance. The court saw premeditated defiance from people who knew better. When you share the faith, you are bound by its heaviest laws. You cannot claim ignorance of a sanctuary you pray toward five times a day. The Saudi Interior Ministry confirmed they were sentenced to death under ta'zir, a discretionary punishment, specifically because of the profound seriousness of violating the sanctity of the mosque. In that strict legal framework, when intentional desecration replaces human weakness, the door for mercy closes, and the sword of deterrence takes over. Every country has its own rules and laws. This is why I tell people: always obey the rules and laws of your host country. Do not protest. Do not flout public orders. Do not test the boundaries of a foreign legal system. Do not impose your moral compass on a sovereign land. When you cross a border, your feelings no longer dictate the law.

Bangladesh says it was not informed of its citizens' execution by Saudi Arabia bbc.in/4zJmny7