Saddam’s death–Sunni and Shia

By Imam Abdullah El-Amin

It is no doubt that those who were first-hand recipients of murder and torture from the hands of Saddam Hussein’s regime have a personal reason to rejoice at his execution last week. I have heard the stories, and seen the evidence, of the brutal cruelty from his mind and hands.

But for the majority of Muslims, the execution is a slap in the face. It was an undignified show of force to shock and awe the world. And it wasn’t the Iraqi government that engineered the execution. Saddam Hussein was in American custody right up to the last minute and then given to the Iraqi government to carry out the dirty work. Added insult was the way the U.S. delivered his body back to his home town as if to say, “Here! Here is your Saddam – in a box. What do you think of that?”

Through policies built on the lies of our president, thousands of American lives and untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and others, have been lost in a personal vendetta carried out through the branches of government. It is a shame that Mr. Bush used the aftermath of 9/11 to launch an attack on a person and a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

At first we went in and took over Afghanistan looking for public enemy #1, Osama Bin Laden. Still, we spent a lot of time on focusing on women wearing the burqa and not going to school so that we could justify our invasion and forced “democracy” of the country. So after we couldn’t find Osama, even after a $25 million ransom, we decided to focus on Saddam.

We used our might, power, and the gullible American mentality, to manufacture a campaign against Iraq and Saddam. The biggest “crime” of his was he had weapons of mass destruction and was a brutal dictator who “gassed his own people,” as Bush was famous for saying. The first charge was not provable, even after extensive international inspections. And the second was nothing but another big excuse to invade the country.

I say this because if Bush was so concerned about brutal dictators he had many more terrible people and countries to choose from besides Iraq. Look at what’s happening in Sudan. The big bad US refuses to use its influence to stop the rape and brutal murder of thousands of defenseless men, women and children.

Colin Powell had a virtually blemish-free career before he co-signed Bush’s “weapons of mass destruction” lie. Mr. Powell even admitted that that was the thing he regretted most in his other-wise stellar career. And he proved it by getting out of that corrupt administration.

So this brings us to the realization that this divisiveness, brought on by this Suni-Shia adversarial madness, is the single most destructive element in the Muslim community. We should be making a bee-line to embrace our brothers and sisters in all sects of the Islamic faith rather than killing each other. I see many of us going out of our way to be apologetic and accommodating to members of other faiths, primarily Christians and Jews, but I don’t see the same zeal in reaching out to your Shi’a or Sunni brothers and sisters.

And it is so tragic because this whole thing is engineered by the enemies of Islam. They want Sunni and Shi’a to fight because it makes their work easier. This is the time for all Muslims to stop being pawns of their enemies and truly live by the directives of the Qur`an. I encourage Muslims from all areas to put their minds and hearts together and truly “love for your brother what you love for yourself.”

As Salaam Alaikum
(Al Hajj) Abdullah Bey El-Amin

9-2