Saddam's Execution: Oops, Wrong Day Posted by Shadi Hamid

The decision to execute Saddam Hussein yesterday (as opposed to, say, the 364 other days of the year) may stand as one of the most stupid decisions ever made by the Nouri al-Maliki government. If there’s one time the Bush administration should have put its foot down and said NO, it was now, it was this. I can’t even begin to think how offensive this must have been to Iraq’s Sunnis. Well, first some background: yesterday was one of the most holy days for the 1 billion plus Sunni Muslims all over the world. Eid al-Adha marks Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Ishmael (it was a test from God, and Abraham ends up slaughtering a sheep instead). The catch is that Sunnis celebrated Eid yesterday, while Shias – including those who rule Iraq – are celebrating it today. Juan Cole (via Steve Benen) sums it up well:

The tribunal...had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam's hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday -- and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar.

So not only was the execution date a deliberate insult to Iraq’s embattled Sunnis, but it was also illegal. This, however, is not the worst of Maliki’s offenses. His is a government that turns a blind eye and, yes, encourages the slaughter of innocent Iraqis through its continued indulgence of its Sadrist coalition partners (yes, you got it right, there are full-fledged terrorists in the highest levels of the Iraqi government). Unfortunately, a steady stream of American commentators seem to think its okay to indulge the Shia Islamists when, if anything, the US should be doing all it can to serve as a counterweight to Shia excess. Why does this all matter? One of the primary engines of terrorism is humiliation, particularly in Arab culture where shame, dignity, and honor play a much larger role than they do in the West. When you schedule Saddam’s execution on Eid al-Adha, it is yet another mark of humiliation on a minority group which continues to suffer under what has become a tyranny of the majority.

I don’t want to belittle this significance of all of this, but I’m going to employ a very basic analogy which may help to explain how humiliation, even in Western culture, can make people do violent, seemingly irrational things. When I first heard of the NBA’s huge fight earlier this month between the Nuggets and the Knicks, I immediately understood why Mardy Collins took down J.R Smith in a particularly tasteless flagrant foul which provoked the wider brawl. Why would Collins start a brawl with only 1:15 left in the game?

Well, it’s simple. The Knicks were being humiliated on their own home court – on the vaunted grounds of Madison Square Garden no less. They were being embarrassed, teased, and put down. Denver still had all its starters on the floor even though it wasn’t close. The Nuggets was running up the score, putting salt in the wound. As a matter of decency, this is something you just don’t do, which is why it’s rare to see all starters playing in the last two minutes of a relative blowout. You just don’t do it. Anyway, at the risk of inappropriately extending an analogy, I will stop there.   

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