Communications

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To the Editor:

Eric Davis's evaluation of my book Saddam Husayn and Islam, 1968–2003 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) in The Middle East Journal, Volume 72, Number 2 (Spring 2018, pp. 327–30) is fair and to the point. For that I am indebted to him. There are a few points that need explanation, but, most importantly, Davis is bringing up the weighty question of the relation between ideology and practice in Saddam Husayn's Iraq.

Davis argues that an overview of the Arab world and most less-developed countries often "indicates the superficial veneer of ideology in domestic politics . . ." Namely: ideology is mere froth on the waves of real politics. Davis's view is that "Saddam's religious convictions were as meaningless as his commitment to Ba'thism" and "Saddam constantly applied a cost-benefit analysis to any decision that he took . . . " Likewise, "Saddam switched ideologies to whatever suited him" (p. 329) all to secure his power. Davis is correct, I think, and this is the conclusion in my book. However, this is only the bottom line.

It seems to me that there is much "above" or before the bottom line, and by leaving it out we may be missing something important. Davis regards Saddam's pan-Arabism as an ideology "which he embraced not out of conviction but to use as a leverage in his effort to make Iraq the Arab world's dominant power" (p. 329). I agree with some but disagree with "not out of conviction." While it served him well, Saddam also seemed to have believed in an Iraqi-hegemonic version of secular pan-Arabism as Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser did in Egyptian-centered Arabism. I think so having read and listened to his memoirs and speeches and to his closed-door talks with his closest underlings, even judging by the emotion in his voice. Saddam was deeply attached to the glory that were the Arabs from the days of the Prophet to the 'Abbasid Caliphate's golden age, namely: to Arab Islam as history. He was similarly attached to the splendor that were Sumer and Babylon. Yet, until the mid-1980s (or earlier, with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's rise to power) he saw shari'a as a guide for modern life as an obstacle on the way to modernity and the clerics ('ulama) as a dangerous competing elite.

This may sound naive, but I think that in order to lead or coerce people, most political leaders need to convince themselves that they are doing the right thing: serving a larger cause than oneself. The first decade of Ba'th rule in Iraq, dominated already by Vice President Saddam Husayn, was essentially secular. This was a genuine Saddam. To his own admission in a top-level meeting in 1986, changed circumstances required changed policies. The competition with Khomeini over legitimacy, the growing popularity of the Iraqi clerics and the difficult war conditions pushed Saddam toward Islamization. Iraq's travails following the defeat in Kuwait did the rest. I share this view with Davis. Islamization was indeed a cynical new bottom line dictated by "cost-benefit calculations." But it does not mean that Saddam had not believed in secular politics. His public policy was eventually definitely Islamized. Yet, while he was very comfortable with his Arab, Islamic cultural, local/Iraqi/Mesopotamian, and tribal identities (the latter two being problematic from party ideology viewpoint), his Islamization was different. It contradicted everything he and many...