Sadaam Hussein is in custody. Osama bin Laden is on the run, reduced to recording tapes to prop up his shrinking network of death-dealers, and may be in custody soon. Both of these men have compared themselves to the revered Muslim Sultan Saladin, ruler of Syria and Egypt and founder of the Ayyubid Dynasty during the 12th century. Saladin has been offered as a rallying cry by both Sadaam Hussien and Osama bin Laden, and as an inspiration for potential Muslim followers. We can expect they will invoke his name again to whomever will listen. But neither man has a factual basis for this comparison. We’ll take a look at three major differences that make this point.
First, Saladin was a Kurd. That’s right, Saladin was not Iraqi, or Yemeni, or even from the Arabian Peninsula. His family was Kurdish—from the same ethnic group Sadaam Hussein tried to wipe off the face of the earth with every horrible means at his disposal, including the famous poison gas attacks. Sadaam Hussein is an Iraqi, born in Tikrit. Osama bin Laden is a Yemeni, born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Second, Saladin came to power almost by accident. He reluctantly accompanied his uncle to Egypt as part of a military mission in the service of the Syrian Sultan Nur al-Din. When Uncle Shirkuh’s forces took over Egypt, Saladin was given rulership because he was not considered to be ambitious. Only after he was granted power did he show his exceptional abilities as a strong leader. In comparison, Sadaam Hussein always put his own ambitions and desires for power over any other concern. When in the late 1970s, the ruler of Iraq moved toward a union with Syria that threatened to freeze Sadaam Hussein out of power, Sadaam moved against that leader, putting his own lust for power over any goal of “pan-Arabism.” Osama bin Laden was born into wealth and power. Instead of rising from humble obscurity to take power over a Muslim nation, Osama bin Laden, by his actions, even offensive to his own religious establishment, has fallen from being a child of wealth and power, to being an outlaw and outcast all over the world, including in Muslim nations.
But most important of all, Saladin abhorred the deaths of innocents. True to the teachings of his religion, to his understanding of the Prophet Mohammed, he believed that whenever possible, innocents must be spared from the agonies of war. Stories of his generosity, kind-heartedness and mercy fill both Muslim and Christian chronicles of his time.
His treatment of Jerusalem when his troops captured the city in 1187 serves as the quintessential example of his behavior. As he readied siege operations, approaching a city almost undefended as a result of his forces’ destruction of most of the Western Christian army in Palestine at the Battle of Hattin, he offered the Christians a generous proposition. He would allow them to forage and hunt unmolested by his troops, until the following year. In return, they were to agree to surrender the city peacefully if by then no rescue had arrived. He sincerely sought to save lives. His offer was rejected. He then swore an oath to take the city with the violence of the western Christian army from the “First Crusade.” That “Christian” army massacred thousands—Muslim, Jew, and even Christian—when they took over Jerusalem. But when Saladin captured Jerusalem, he still took it peacefully, choosing not to fulfill his oath, and allowing the huge mass of refugees crowded into the city to ransom themselves to avoid slavery. When the wealthier Christians failed to ransom many of the poorer Christian refugees, Saladin ended up freeing many of them anyway, guaranteeing their safe passage to coastal cities in Christian hands.
So how does this portrait of Saladin, celebrated as a great man of compassion, compare to the undisputed facts about the despicable behavior of Sadaam Hussein or Osama bin Laden? Saladin wouldn’t have had mass graves in his realm. He wouldn’t have watched videotapes of torture—he would have been outraged by them. And the idea of sending suicide squads to murder thousands of innocents, including Muslims, in a distant land—innocents who had never raised a hand in battle against him—would certainly have been rejected emphatically by Saladin. The idea of laughing at the suicide squads, mocking them, remarking that some had no idea they’re going to their deaths, would also certainly have been rejected by the great Muslim Sultan. In fact, we can speculate that Saladin would probably have taken serious disciplinary actions against any subordinates who had behaved in this manner.
Saladin resisted terrorizing innocent citizens; he never used such a tactic in his waging of a “holy war.” That policy has been embraced by both Sadaam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. In fact, we need only look at this third comparison to conclude that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden share nothing with Saladin except their claim to the same religion. We might wonder how Saladin would have felt sharing his vision of Islam with these two modern-day international villains.
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