Iraks islamisering under Saddam Hussein

The seminar will be conducted in English and live streamed on www.diis.dk

Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. Please use our online registration form on

https://conferencemanager.events/IslamizationofIraqduringSaddamHussein/s…

And do so no later than Wednesday, 23 September 2015 at 12.00 noon.

Saddam ended up a born-again Muslim

The Islamization began as a coldly calculated cynical step designed to refute Khomeini’s accusations of Baathi atheism, but toward the end, at least Saddam personally, became a born-again Muslim.

The Islamization Campaign, while designed to bring the more religious Shi’i population closer to the regime and to their Sunni co-patriots, it in fact deepened the gulf between the two communities. The senior Shi’i religious leadership was suppressed, while the more compliant Sunni clerics were supported heavily.

A 1991 bloody suppression of a Shi’i revolt further drove the two communities away from each other. The regime’s elite was weaned of their Baathi secularism, which was replaced by Shari’ah, Qur’an and Hadith studies.

Even those Baathis who remained secular at the core identified the great political advantage provided by the “Islamization” and faked Islamic piety. But which Islam? The regime’s official Islam was of the soft Sunni version, but Sunni it was. 

Unofficially, very radical Sunni trends, anti-Shi’i Wahhabi as well as Sufi ones, were encouraged as long as they did not turn against the regime. The result was a growing sense of discrimination and oppression on the part of the Shi’ah.

“Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of ISIS/Daesh, is the result of Saddam’s education, except that he performed a quantum leap in terms of radicalizing Saddam’s Islam, and he abandoned Saddam’s ambivalence toward the Shi’ah in favor of coherent anti-Shi’i revulsion.

Speakers

• Amatzia Baram, Professor Emeritus, University of Haifa
• Lars Erslev Andersen, Senior researcher, DIIS

Programme

Læs videre på 

http://www.diis.dk/event/islamization-of-iraq-during-saddam-hussein

HUSK at du indtil videre kan se hele månedsoversigten over arrangementer på http://u-landsnyt.dk/kalender