RELIGION-IRAQ: Saddam Invokes Islam for Support

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kim Ghattas

BAGHDAD, Jul 3 2002 (IPS) - The call to prayer echoes around the streets of Baghdad. The turquoise blue domes of mosques tower above houses all over the city. Every year at least one more is inaugurated – on Saddam Hussein’s birthday.

Saddam Hussein now personally orders construction of new mosques. Often he oversees the design. The secular Baath party he heads is moving now to revive religion.

More and more Iraqis go to the mosque. More women have begun to wear the veil. This is unusual in a country that has always been staunchly secular. But for Iraqis, struggling with life after two wars and 12 years under sanctions, religion is slowly becoming a refuge.

“We feel we need support, we need peace, so we pray,” says Wajed, a young Iraqi. “Everybody seeks refuge somewhere, some people here turned to art, I turned to God.”

The Iraqi regime first saw the growing religious mood as a threat. But instead of moving to check it, the regime co-opted it.

Religion is now used to promote Saddam as a Muslim leader, and not just the leader of Iraq. There is an attempt also to use religion to erase religious differences within Iraq. A slight majority of Iraqis are Shiites but they are underrepresented in government authority, and they have rebelled against the regime before.

“Iraq has always been a secular state and the Baath party has always been a secular party,” says Abdel Razzak el Hashimi, a leading member of the party. “But we are aiming at a better understanding of religion as a factor uniting people. It’s very important when the country is under threat, so that the people are united around the leadership and around the objectives of this leadership.”

It all started during the Gulf war when Saddam Hussein added the words ‘Allahu Akbar’, Arabic for ‘God is great’ to the Iraqi flag. He promised to liberate Jerusalem, a holy site for Muslims. The Iraqi leader, a Sunni Muslim, followed this up with what is called the ‘Faith Campaign’. Study of the Koran was made compulsory in schools. In 1996, alcohol was banned in restaurants.

Now demonstrations are being held in Baghdad calling on the Iraqi president to liberate Palestine. Saddam Hussein sends 25,000 dollars to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. And he provides financial help to families who have lost relatives or their homes in violence in the Palestinian territories.

These actions are winning him support from Palestinians and other Muslims in the Arab world disenchanted with their own rulers. Many in the Arab world see Saddam Hussein as hero.

Sheikh Abdel Ghafoor el Qaysi, vice-president of the Saddam University for Islamic Studies in Baghdad, says that every year on April 28, Saddam Hussein’s birthday, a new mosque is inaugurated and construction is started on another. In 1999, construction began on the Saddam mosque, which Iraqis claim will be the biggest mosque in the Middle East.

“Our leader, the great believer Saddam Hussein always called on people to go back to religion and real values,” says Sheikh al Qaysi. “Our great project now is to start teaching the sayings of the Iraqi president in universities.”

But society in Iraq remains secular at heart. Iraqi artists still paint nudes, something unheard of in other Muslim countries. People still enjoy a drink or two at home if they can afford it. The number of veiled woman is growing, but they are still less than in Jordan or Egypt, which are far more liberal than Saudi Arabia.

“It’s great to have more mosques, this way I don’t have to go very far to pray,” says Sahar Saadi, a mother of four shopping at the Shorja market in central Baghdad. “Religion is important for me, but it’s good nothing is imposed on anyone.”

In private many Iraqis complain about the huge expense of building these mosques and dozens of presidential palaces while ordinary Iraqis have barely enough to survive on. Religion might be a refuge, but Iraqis seem to know that religion alone will not provide the answers, particularly if it is used as a tool by the regime.