Saddam bin Hussein and Hussein bin Ali

"For you are Hussein and I am Hussein, and today we shall see which Hussein will come triumphant."
- Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, addressing Imam Hussein's shrine in Kerbala during the 1991 Shiite revolution.

Due to the differences between the Hijri Islamic calendar, based on the moon, and the universally adopted Gregorian Sun-based calendar, the Islamic one is shorter by 11 days, as a result, in about three years, the Gregorian date for the execution-martyrdom of one Saddam-Hussein will take place suspiciously near the Imam Hussein mythical one back in the Hijri 10th of Muharram, 680 AD.

This post is delievered to you in the accompaniment of the Imam Hussein's Arbaieen, which is an Arab tradition to honor the 40th day after the mourning day of the actual date for the person's death. Preferably listen to this flagellation piece while reading, and also, it doesn't hurt to check out this new item about Saddam's upcoming bio-(e)pic, wattnun madda!

Imam Hussein, the eternal revolutionnary, the ship of safety, the ongoing crusade against tyranny all across the world, and Saddam Hussein, the very crystallization of all the principles against the historical Imam fought for, and lost, and died.

Coming from parallel universe these two men might be, but there is one enchanting similarity between the two which I felt interesting to share with you.

In 680 AD, Muwaiya, the caliph, has designated his son, Yazid, as his heir, hinting about an intention to hold a dynasty, a first occurence in the new Islamic state. Most of the Muslims, either grudgingly or not, wishing no further bloodshed, agreed upon this, a few prominent figures in Mecca tried to delay the matter of their response, and Imam Hussein was one of them, twenty years earlier, Imam Hussein's father, the celebrated Imam Ali, had fought a bloody civil war with Muawiya, Ali's forces were centered in Kufa, the first Islamic city built in Iraq, and his army was called the Iraqi army, while Muawiya was the emir of Sham (Levant, modern day Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon), and his army was called Shammi army, Imam Ali was almost victorious when the stubborness of his own men brought him into a stalemate, all his attempts to rekindle the vigour and zeal of rightesouness afterwards fell on deaf words, and he was so sick of them that at the end he wished that he never came to them. After Ali was killed by a renegade force of his own army, his elder son, Imam Hasan, being a peace-lover and seeing that his shaky, reluctant troops were no match for Muawiya's suave political abilities, settled on ending the war and that Muawiya becomes Caliph. As soon as Yazid assumed caliphate however, Imam Hussein began receiving letters from his father's followers in Kufa, urging him to come to them and declare rebellion, being eager to reclaim his rightful title, he ignored all advice about the riff-raff nature of the Kufians, and that they were the same people who failed his father two decades ago, he marched to Kufa in 680 AD, and sent his cousin, Muslim bin Aqeel, as a scout to look into the matter, at that time, Hussein's followers were nearly 18,000 men in Kufa. The Umayyads would not remain silent over this dangerous threat, having just sustained their foothold back in the upper layer of the Arab society after a lull of 40 years, and they knew the reluctance of the Kufians well, the emir of Kufa, Ubaidullah Bin Zeyad, sent his own men into the masses and they began discouraging people skillfully by threats and promises, and pretty soon enough the once proud force Aqeel gathered dwindled to about thirty men, and he was shortly killed thereafter. Hussein was on route upon hearing the news, and shortly thereafter he was intercepted and prevented from returning back whence he came, and was savagely killed with his 80 men by the very same followers of his in the Battle of Kerbala, not a single soldier of the army which surrounded him was from Sham, all were Iraqis.

The Iraqis would soon feel regret for their shameful actions, and little by little people would come and visit his shrine, feeling an alarming guilt consicence that only got bigger and bigger over the years...

This is the story of Imam Hussein, it is the final straw that broke the unity camel's back of the Muslim nation and it still embarrasingly is a source of tensions that plague us until today.

The story of Saddam Hussein, however, is the stuff of which black comedies of the darkest of the dark are made of, The moustached man has spent the better part of his last years in seeking a monument to retain his personal majesty, he tried all the tried methods: writing glorious roman a clefs, erecting huge Nebuchanedzzar-like monuments where every brick has his initials,or going on a campaign of a Saddam statue for every Iraqi of the 28 million inside the blasted little country. Before, he was a mere tyrant, yes, he was feared by some, respected by others, but by a little extraordinary performance at the gallows, Saddam, always the showman, has climaxed an inventive carrier at the little screen and has achieved the one thing he has purusing all his lifetime, Saddam is now a mythical figure in the Arab folklore, one who is now looked for between the heavenly celestial bodies, or by his assprint on the moon, one whose soul is sensed in the gatherings of nationalistic conferneces. And what could you do but laugh and hoot at the sight of a nation which spans from the Atlantic to the Pacific, toasting for the memory of a man who enslaved, killed, committed genocide, and just about tortured his country in every possible way?

Saddam's similarity with Imam Hussein is in that Arabs today are doing for Saddam Hussein what Shiites did for Hussein some 1300 years ago, treating him with a reluctant zeal born not from that is mostly indifference while he was alive, but once he is dead - he is immediately subscribed with the pantheon of the holies, each in their comparative league, of course. There are justifications for this, Both Shiites back then and Arabs today are on the losing side, when you lose, you tend to search for answers in your own ideology and immediately begin demonizing the other side (Jews/Americans in our case, all Sunni rulers in Shiites case) as fearfully as possible, of course, Imam Hussein is an immediate grandson for the Prophet Muhammed, and this is simply too tempting to just dangle about in the air for people who are getting persecuted mercilessly during the Abbasid and Umayyad times, so the addition of a few supernatural flairs such as knowning the future and the doom of his adventure but doing it anyway, adding those traits to his already growing mystique was not only predictable but almost inevitable. Saddam Hussein, to his unfortunate luck, was born in unmythical times, and this would limit his stature to a mere hero and national pride for the Arab nation - the Arab world is currently locked in the mentality that America is a direct or indirect enemy, due to their support for Israel, and they seek people who can recompsenate our own idleness and reliance on Western products and culture everywhere in people such as Saddam Hussein, who stands defiantly in the face of his blank executioner, who looked cowardly in sock he wore over his head. For in the Arab mind, another Battle of Kerbala has taken place, only televised and brought to the living room, right before their naked eyes, indeed, if anything, why is not the United States Yazid I, in his far-reaching tyranny, and why is not Nuri al-Maliki, why, Ubaidallah bin Ziyad, the cruel emir of Kufa, and what comes if indeed Saddam Hussein, is the Hussein bin Ali, the martyr of justice and the redeemer of religion, reincarinated?

Let us suppose that hypothetically Iran goes crazy and invades all the Arab countries, liberating Shiites everywhere and resurrecting the glories of anceint Persia, would not Saddam Hussein be fondly remembered, reverred, and perhaps, if we were living a few thousand years back, semi-worshipped?


Baghdad, 2712 AD

We all huddled as the oracle was beginning her tale, she would tell it exactly the way she heard it from her mother, who heard it from her own mother, generation to generation, we pass the maqtal to future generations, we love it, and it is a way of our life, and we listen, ponder and cry for our own ailment. The days when our country was not yet awashed by the invaders from the west and the east, back when a cursed thing called oil was still in our country, before the great darkness began. On the light of the candle lamp, the oracle's features were grim, her eyes closed, and then suddenly she opened her eyes and began to tell the tale:

"In a small village in Tikrit, back when the times were pleasant and the meadows were yet green, happiness was filling the land and birds were chirping in the skies, a boy was born in the darkest of nights, and suddenly the moon came in full behind the raining clouds, and the glorious life-affirming cries of the small child came to open the silence. The mother stood silent and happy watching the baby in the father's arms...
"What shall we name him?"
"Crusher (Saddam), because he shall crush the unjust enemies."
and thereby comes the prophecy of the ancient prophet Mohammed, peace be upon be him, true, for he once said: "There comes a great darkness over my nation, when will grows scarce and the night grows long, but then comes Sadim*, and he refills the land with justice as it was filled with injustice, before he is lifted to his creator, and then injustice gets its chance to reign superme."