[MD] Intellect battles the [immigrant] barbarians

[Khaled Alkotob]

[Patt]
> Are you saying that women were allowed to vote during the Saddam 
> regime
> and could go about the streets of Baghdad in Western clothes? Are you 
> saying 
> women were invited to participate in the higher levels of 
> government? Are you 
> saying marriages weren't arranged,that women accused of adultery 
> weren't stoned 
> to death, and that thieves didn't have their hands chopped off? 
> Please 
> enlighten me about this wonderful "cradle of civilization."

Yeah they kidnaped tortured and killed people, but it was not in the name
of religion. NOW, it's in the name of religion.

Wee you can go read the wikepidea article yourself

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein

You can what you want about the guy, a religious fundamentalist he was
not. Which is by the way is what Iraq has been turned into.

and her is the excerpt from Wikepidia about saddam and religion

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Saddam Hussein as a secular leader

Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a modernizer, following
the model of Nasser, President of Egypt. To the consternation of Islamic
conservatives, his government gave women added freedoms and offered them
high-level government and industry jobs. Saddam also created a
Western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian
Gulf region not ruled according to traditional Islamic law (Sharia).
Saddam abolished the Sharia law courts, except for personal injury
claims.

Domestic conflict impeded Saddam's modernizing projects. Iraqi society is
divided along lines of language, religion and ethnicity; Saddam's
government rested on the support of the 20% minority of largely
working-class, peasant, and lower middle class Sunni Muslims, continuing
a pattern that dates back at least to the British mandate authority's
reliance on them as administrators.

The Shi'a majority were long a source of opposition to the government due
to its secular policies, and the Ba'ath Party was increasingly concerned
about potential Sh'ia Islamist influence following the Iranian Revolution
of 1979. The Kurds of northern Iraq (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs)
were also permanently hostile to the Ba'athist party's Arabizing
tendencies. To maintain his regime Saddam Hussein tended either to
provide them with benefits so as to co-opt them into the regime, or to
take repressive measures against them. The major instruments for
accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police
organizations. Beginning in 1974, Taha Yassin Ramadan, a close associate
of Saddam, commanded the People's Army, which was responsible for
internal security. As the Ba'ath Party's paramilitary, the People's Army
acted as a counterweight against any coup attempts by the regular armed
forces. In addition to the People's Army, the Department of General
Intelligence (Mukhabarat) was the most notorious arm of the state
security system, feared for its use of torture and assassination. It was
commanded by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's younger half-brother.
Since 1982, foreign observers believed that this department operated both
at home and abroad in their mission to seek out and eliminate perceived
opponents of Saddam Hussein.[7]

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