According to MSNBC’s website, Saddam Hussein will be executed within 36 hours. (This development has been diaried: http://www.dailykos.com/... ) The timing of his execution is both interesting and problematic to me, and I wanted to let others in this community, who may not be familiar with Islam, know why that is.
As many of you may not know, Saturday morning is the beginning of the Muslim holy days called Eid-ul-Adha. This is the "big Eid" lasting 4 days; the slighter shorter "small Eid" takes place at the end of Ramadan (which this year, was at the end of October). Eid ul Adha has two major elements of signifcance within in Islam.
First, the festival marks the end of the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is one of the most important parts of the muslim year. The prayers and kutba (sermon) beginning the Eid celebration are the culmination of the pilgrimage.
The second, and more significant in this case, aspect of Eid ul Adha is that it marks the muslim prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael at the command of God (You may know these characters better as Abraham and Isaac). This festival’s name is often translated as the Feast of Sacrifice. While regional traditions vary, Eid ul Adha is normally celebrated by a family group sacrificing a lamb and sharing it equally amongst relatives and the poor. This is a day which usually combines something akin to American/Christian ideas of Thanksgiving and Easter: there is a pervading sense of thankfulness for the bounty of God and an emphasis on both charity and feasting as a manifestation, at the same time there are constant rememberances of sacrifice in the name of God.
Given the context of this holiday, Saddam Hussein’s statement that "I sacrifice myself. If God wills it, he will place me among the true men and martyrs" takes on a new level of meaning. Hussein is playing into the sensibility Iraqi muslims, as well as more secular Iraqis for whom such a prominent muslim concept will still resonate. He is equating himself to the muslim prophets (the "true men"), like Ibrahim, and at the same time evoking martyrdom.
My own opinions on the death penalty aside, I think that it would be a huge mistake for his execution to occur anywhere near this holiday. Imagine for a moment that the situation were different, and the civil war in Iraq was raging in part around various ethnic sects of Christianity rather than Islam (I realize this parallel doesn’t entirely hold; but please indulge me); imagine that the condemned former leader was set to be executed on or around Good Friday and Easter weekend. At the same time, that leader makes a statement about how he’ll be a sacrifice for his people.
Now, Saddam Hussein is certainly not an Islamic leader, and his Baathist sympathizers, to the best of my understanding, are largely secular. However, he is trying to use Islamic metaphors to construct himself as a symbol of Iraqi unity in the face of a foreign military force as well as a government he repeatedly asserts is the puppet of the West. The Baathists will definitely wreak a little havoc whenever he’s executed, but he’s trying to appeal to the sensibilities of a largely muslim population, on the basis of a widely reaching aspects of muslim religious ideology.
I don’t know if his efforts will have the desired effect of unifying the Iraqi population even more against the occupation, but the timing of the execution combined with Hussein’s statements on the matter can be nothing but bad news. Maybe I’m over-reacting; perhaps so many Iraqi muslims hate him so much that it won’t matter how he tries to construct himself as one of them against the American presence. But, I’m just saying, maybe they ought not to execute him during the annual Feast of Sacrifice. Why give him even the possibility of having greater divisive wind in his sails? Just a thought.
(Source for Hussein quote: http://news.bbc.co.uk/...