The ZamZam Cooler

Mr. Iraq, aka Saddam Hussein was executed in front of a global audience on December 30th. International coverage made for that global viewing with Saddam's last moments viewable to everyone almost everywhere.

Saddam Hussain was a brutal dictator. The former President of Iraq's rule featured the staple characteristics of a classical dictatorship: nepotism, sectarian prejudice and championing of causes that would strengthen his power base and those who would likely inherit it. He killed indiscriminately without trial, he exalted people to power who were completely unfit to govern and were entirely unable to relate to different ethnicities and cultural groupings they lead. Saddam managed to kick off his rule with a bang by waging war with the "Persians", fresh off of their revolution to appease his American friends who trained and supported Saddam's series of assassinations that lead to his family's rule and eventually his. After that, he committed himself to suppressing political, religious and cultural voices that questioned or advanced a life for Iraqis different from what he visioned and was not hesitant to silence those voices through assassination and violence.

Saddam, however had a flavour for flare and ideology as well. Among a choir of Arab Nationalists, Saddam's voice quickly became one of the loudest. He pursued many causes in the name of Arabism and supporting the Arabs--providing petroleum at cost to Jordan and parts of Syria and his generous charities to families in occupied territories just to name a couple of the more prominently known causes.

Now and today, as inquiries begin about the nature of Saddam's execution and the disgraceful manner in which it was managed and as voices begin to call out of Saddam's martyrdom, there some notes that we should remember.

Saddam doesn't represent anyone. His affiliation is to no one in Iraq. I like to say that Saddam represents almost everything wrong with Muslim society today, our inability to work together to establish those social contracts needed for communities to live in harmony gives the space for instability and hence, plays out in the form of coups and authorianism. Today, no one should stand by Saddam Hussain as a voice of reason and as a proof of truth. And those who do, only have done so or are doing so out of convenience. We should not deflate his crimes, nor should we project him as a welcomed choice for Iraqis. For those of us in the Muslim community who are furiated with Saddam's demise and now his death, we must be consistent with our values regarding the crisis in Iraq, and that includes the viewing of Saddam Hussain and what he did as President of Iraq.

Likewise, just as we shouldn't call Saddam to triumph neither should we call to triumph his death or his demise. All persons, tyrants and saints alike need to be treated with dignity and justice, simply for the stability a society and to provide credibility to the institutions that govern. What happened to Saddam looks more like redemption than it does justice. I once heard a remark from a Colombian cabinet minister who served in office during the years of gang violence and cocaine trade, in which Colombia was at the mercy of these super-power gangsters and in the chaos much like Iraq is witnessing today, he said, and I paraphrase: Nations, developing nations, can suffer through natural disasters like famine and earthquakes and survive and even be prosperous thereafter, irrespective of how impoverish the nation may have been. However, any nation, no matter how powerful or how impoverish cannot survive through injustice. Injustice is how nations die.

The end of Saddam needs to be a renewal, it shouldn't be characterize by redemption and vengeance nor should it stimulate those same emotions. The crimes that Saddam perpetrated should be understood but not enshrined into the psyche of Iraqis, they are important only in the process of renewal. The executioners, probably themselves victims in someway of Saddam's brutality, should have behaved in a way that reflected the sense of justice and integrity that was so absent during Saddam's reign; and the government of Iraq now, more than ever, needs to convey that to the Iraqi public and the world.

Nonetheless, Iraqis and the observing Muslim societies need to understand the crisis in Iraq in a much more objective way, not only qualifying acts as just or unjust but to look ahead and suggest a truly practical and pragmatic Iraq. One that admits that everyone, and each group is not uniform, one that looks to the future and not the past and most importantly defines Iraq as it naturally is, not in the manner that Saddam did nor in the manner of sectarianism. Iraq will be different, but the sooner everyone comes to accept that and work towards it, the faster Iraq will be Iraq.