Saddam’s hanging: Holy day’s choice, its implication for Muslims
By Dr. Muhtari Ahmadu Kura
doktamutari@yahoo.com
WE have just begun the celebration of the most holy day of the year 1427 AH which came to all Muslims all over the world with a very important bonus (that is the holy day of Arfat combined with Friday.The combination of these two important Muslim days is very significant and it usually comes every decade or there about. Many Muslims around the globe were already celebrating the Eid–el-adha when the news of the most brutal act perpetrated by the American imperialist backed gang of Iraq announced the hanging of a Muslim brother in far away Iraq. To add salt to injuries, the occupational forces in Muslim Iraq and their local lackeys splashed live the act of hanging of their erstwhile enemy Saddam Hussein.
The hows and whys of the Iraqi war of aggregation which the American imperialists and occupation force are waging, is well known to all, more especially the Muslim Umma around the world. As it is, Saddam Hussein represented different things to different people (atheist, brutal dictator or even a devil).
To this writer, he represents the symbol of resistance to the hegemonic occupation of Arab lands by Israel and its imperialist backers in Europe, Asia and the Arab lands themselves. More importantly, he was a Muslim who to the very end kept on uttering the most important word of Shahada.
I am very much aware of his brutal ascention to the throne (presidency) of Iraq some four decades ago, and the brute force with which he steered the affairs of hitherto violent infested country of Iraq. He it was (under the direct command of his American mentors) that imposed a seven- and-a-half-year aggressive war-on the Islamic Republic of Iran, where more than three million Muslims in both Iran and Iraq perished. In the late 1980s, he deliberately threatened and occupied a tiny neighbour’s territory (Kuwait) and defied all international rules and regulations, until such a time when the Americans with their so-called coalition pushed his army of occupation back to their boarders.
In all those times, Saddam was still in the good books of the American imperialists and their allies. It would have been right then to arrest Saddam and his gangs of megalomaniacs in Iraq, prosecute them and exert punishment as the time demands. Well, that was not done because he was still then serving the interest of the imperialists and the Israelites.
A combination of circumstances and happenstances, such as the intractable Arab-Palestinian confrontation that defied any solution, the secret of Isreali aquisition of nuclear devices and the Palestinians Intifada forced Saddam to make a dramatic turnaround policy changes, that went paralel to his American imperialist backers (USA, British, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and many others). They then saw those changes as fundamental, that may derail their longstanding desire to “democratise” the entire Middle East.
If allowed to prosper, the likes of Saddam Hussein will sprout out all over the region and the ultimate domination theory would be in jeopardy. At that time,the man Saddam was daily becoming more and more patriotic, realizing that the Middle Eastern problems could be washed away just like that, without the unity of purpose to defeat the Israeli occupational forces and the imperialistic penetration of the core Arab and Islamic lands in Palestine and Golan Heights.
This new realization, though belated has scared the imperialists and their Israeli allies in the Middle East, who panicked and bombed the headquarters of the Iraqi Defence Industries as well as the Nuclear Research Institute in one of the Iraqi industrial towns. The information that war planes that rained incessant bombs that destroyed the infrastructures that could have laid down the foundation of High Industrial Development and paved the way for Iraq and implication other Middle Eastern countries, the long awaited entrance into the modern global technological development. This is what the developed countries were really scared about the man Saddam. To me, he died as a hero of the struggle to rid the Iraqi state of the American occupational forces and by extention the Israeli Jews’ occupation of the Palestinian and Arab lands.
Now that the American backed regime in Bagdad had successfully got rid of Saddam Hussein, would they win the war that is raging on, or have they added fuel to the situation in the country? What are the real and perceived implications for the Iraqi people and the Middle Eastern Arab and Muslim countries? Have the Americans and their lackeys not ever thought of offending the sensibilities of all Muslims of the world? Has the widespread publicity given to this brutal act taught the Muslims any leason about the aims and objectives of policies of war on Muslims? questions upon questions, that may never be answered.
However, a single word is enough for the Muslim Umma nay the third world countries. Over to you our political and religious leaders!

Dr. Muhtari Ahmadu Kura is the executive director in charge of Kura Surgery and Maternity clinic, 25/26 Dalili area, Kura, Kano state.