Word: martyre
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...deliberate affront to Iraqi Sunnis, as Saddam was hung minutes before the start of the Sunni holy festival of Eid. The result of the fiasco at the gallows is that across the Sunni world, Saddam, once anathema even to most Sunnis, is rapidly being transformed into a martyr who courageously stood up to a vengeful Shiite majority. Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government, and particularly Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who fast-tracked and oversaw Saddam’s execution, is squarely to blame. Instead of unity, Saddam’s execution has come to symbolize a deep fragmentation...
...hang him one night and announce it the next day," he said. "They will bury him quietly and forbid his family from building a mausoleum. After that, they will try to make Iraqis believe Saddam never existed." Abu Hamza, however, believed that in death Saddam would become an immortal martyr in the eyes of Sunnis. "When they hang Saddam, they will make him once again powerful," he said. It bodes ill for Iraq's future that he may well be proved right...
...They will call Saddam a martyr, not because they love him, but for their own gain...
...Kurds in their place, and kept the Iranians from invading during the Iran-Iraq war. They may never look at Saddam as Saladin, the Muslim general who liberated Jerusalem in 1187. But when the rough edges do wear off, Sunnis will look at Saddam as a martyr...
...last fall, even the insurgents notionally fighting in his name were beginning to wonder if he might not be more useful as a martyr than as the lead actor in a TV farce. One afternoon last October, I watched the televised Saddam trial in the company of Abu Hamza, a field commander of Jaish al-Islami. Iraq's largest insurgent group, Jaish al-Islami is made up mainly of Ba'athists and soldiers from Saddam's army. Abu Hamza had been an officer in Saddam's elite Republican Guard; in previous meetings, he had spoken reverentially about the dictator, describing...