Authors Affiliations are at time of print publication. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Show Summary Details. Subscriber Login Email Address. Password Please enter your Password. Library Card Please enter your library card number. The resulting authoritarian structures allowed him to employ Islamic symbols and rhetoric in public policy, but in a controlled manner.
Saddam ultimately promoted a Ba'thist interpretation of religion that subordinated it to Arab nationalism, rather than depicting it as an independent or primary political identity. The point of this examination of Iraqi history, other than to correct the current understanding of Saddam Hussein's political use of religion throughout his presidency, is to examine how Saddam's controlled use of religion was dismantled during the US-Iraq war, and consequently set free extremists that were suppressed under his regime.
Muhammad was an Arab prophet who preached a divine message intended for his Arab followers. Of course, Saddam recognized that non-Arab Muslims existed, but he considered them to be lesser Muslims, who if they practiced their religion properly, would have to recognize the special role of the Arab people.
Instead, they saw Islam in more generic terms as a national heritage that could unite all Arabs. The language in which it came down [to Muhammad] was Arabic, its view and understanding were of the Arab mind [etc. The former saw Islam as a universal — rather than Arab — religion and they emphasized piety as well as Islamic law; the latter were — at least in theory — atheists who saw no role for any religion in Arab politics.
If the regime promoted Islam and the importance of religion, it risked empowering sectarian and Islamist actors. When they seized control of Iraq in , the constitution they created was filled with references to Islam. However, the regime clashed with religious leaders early in its rule and was forced to make a tactical retreat on religious issues.
By , when the regime released the next version of its constitution, almost all references to Islam and religion were removed. A few months later, Saddam's older brother died of cancer.
When Saddam was born, his mother, severely depressed by her oldest son's death and the disappearance of her husband, was unable to effectively care for Saddam, and at age three, he was sent to Baghdad to live with his uncle, Khairallah Talfah. Years later, Saddam would return to Al-Awja to live with his mother, but after suffering abuse at the hand of his stepfather, he fled to Baghdad to again live with Talfah, a devout Sunni Muslim and ardent Arab nationalist whose politics would have a profound influence on the young Saddam.
After attending the nationalistic al-Karh Secondary School in Baghdad, in , at age 20, Saddam joined the Ba'ath Party, whose ultimate ideological aim was the unity of Arab states in the Middle East. On October 7, , Saddam and other members of the Ba-ath Party attempted to assassinate Iraq's then-president, Abd al-Karim Qasim, whose resistance to joining the nascent United Arab Republic and alliance with Iraq's communist party had put him at odds with the Ba'athists.
During the assassination attempt, Qasim's chauffeur was killed, and Qasim was shot several times, but survived. Saddam was shot in the leg. Several of the would-be assassins were caught, tried and executed, but Saddam and several others managed to escape to Syria, where Saddam stayed briefly before fleeing to Egypt, where he attended law school.
In , when Qasim's government was overthrown in the so-called Ramadan Revolution, Saddam returned to Iraq, but he was arrested the following year as the result of in-fighting in the Ba'ath Party. While in prison, however, he remained involved in politics, and in , was appointed deputy secretary of the Regional Command.
Shortly thereafter he managed to escape prison, and in the years that followed, continued to strengthen his political power. In , Saddam participated in a bloodless but successful Ba'athist coup that resulted in Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr becoming Iraq's president and Saddam his deputy.
He did much to modernize Iraq's infrastructure, industry and health-care system, and raised social services, education and farming subsidies to levels unparalleled in other Arab countries in the region. He also nationalized Iraq's oil industry, just before the energy crisis of , which resulted in massive revenues for the nation. During that same time, however, Saddam helped develop Iraq's first chemical weapons program and, to guard against coups, created a powerful security apparatus, which included both Ba'athist paramilitary groups and the People's Army, and which frequently used torture, rape and assassination to achieve its goals.
In , when al-Bakr attempted to unite Iraq and Syria, in a move that would have left Saddam effectively powerless, Saddam forced al-Bakr to resign, and on July 16, , Saddam became president of Iraq. Less than a week later, he called an assembly of the Ba'ath Party.
During the meeting, a list of 68 names was read out loud, and each person on the list was promptly arrested and removed from the room. Of those 68, all were tried and found guilty of treason and 22 were sentenced to death.
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