Mideast Leaders Can’t Stop Laughing At ‘Consent Of The Governed’ Wikipedia Page

“You cannot seriously tell me people entertain this as a genuine, operative political concept.”

Ankara, July 27 – Heads of numerous Arab and Muslim countries spent time Wednesday finding comic relief in an online encyclopedia entry that discusses the notion of political rule stemming from agreement by the people being ruled.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Jordan’s King Abdullah shared several minutes of what the king called “belly-aching laughter” this morning over the content of a Wikipedia entry called Consent of the Governed. Abdullah was so tickled by the page that he then repeated the experience with President of Egypt Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi and the Emir of Kuwait, Sabah Ahmad Al-Sabah.

The Emir, in turn, shared the treat with King Salman of Saudi Arabia, who, witnesses say, guffawed for a full two minutes before his breathing returned to normal. He then called the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, who believed the page was a hoax. “You cannot seriously tell me people entertain this as a genuine, operative political concept,” he insisted.

“Get this – ‘The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them, without a violation of their natural birthright.’ – that’s some guy named John Milton,” explained Salman. “Is this guy a riot, or what?”

“‘The legislative and executive power used by government to protect property is nothing except the natural power of each man resigned into the hands of the community’ – you’ve got to be kidding!” laughed the king of Bahrain. ‘…it is justified merely because it is a better way of protecting natural right than the self-help to which each man is naturally entitled’ – by Allah, who is this clown?” he added, referring to a passage describing the thought of John Locke.

For the rest of the day the joke spread across the region, and by early afternoon it was providing amusement for leaders in Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan, and even Shiite Iran. “I don’t know who sent me this link, but it’s a doozy,” breathed a teary-eyed Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. “I haven’t laughed so hard since I last saw John Kerry explaining the nuclear deal to reporters.”

The Consent of the Governed article soon attracted the attention of Kim Jong-un of North Korea, who had one of his aides print out a hard copy. The aide reported that the dictator first showed confusion, but slowly began chuckling to himself, and finally fell out of his chair. The aide was then executed for relaying this information.