This week marks the 38th anniversary on Saddam’s execution of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir AL Sadr and his sister Sayedah Amina Al-Sadr [Known for Bent Al Huda], on 9 April 1980. Remarkably enough, the same date marks too Saddam’s Baathist regime collapse, following the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. On that same day, the U.S. military pulled down a 16-foot statue of the notorious Tyrant Saddam at Baghdad’s Firdaus Square.Unequivocally, the de-baathification process has ended an era of brutality and bloodshed of thousands of Iraqi and Iranian innocent people. Saddam’s unforgettable chemical attacks against Iraqis and his imposed war on Iran, from 1980 to 1988, backed by many Western governments, have claimed about one million lives.
Late Ayatollah Al-Sadr was a thinker, philosopher and religious scholar; whose books and thoughts on how to resist oppression have inspired generations of free people around the world. Indeed, Ayatollah Al-Sadr was a child prodigy who, at ten, delivered lectures on Islamic history. At eleven, he was a student of logic.At the age of 24, Ayatollah Al-Sadr was a prolific phenomenal author; his most significant works were ‘Our philosophy’ [Falsafatuna] and ‘Our economics’ [Iqtisaduna].These works were critiques of both socialism and capitalism. His ultimate goal of writing was to show that religious knowledge was not the antithesis of scientific knowledge. His works were detailed critiques of Marxism that presented early ideas of an alternative Islamic form of government.
In his final days, Ayatollah Al-Sadr, addressed the Iraqis from all factions, “Let your words unite, and your lines join as one under the banner of Islam: for the sake of saving Iraq from the nightmare of this group of tyrants, and for the cause of building a free and dignified Iraq, ruled by the justice of Islam and where human dignity and rights are supreme, and where all citizens, from different ethnicities and sects, feel that they are brothers working together – all of them – in leading their country, rebuilding their nation, and realising their higher Islamic values based on our true message and great history.”
Ayatollah Al-Sadr maintained that “Islamic theory rejects monarchy as well as the various forms of dictatorial government; it also rejects the aristocratic regimes and proposes a form of government, which contains all the positive aspects of the democratic system.”He also addressed the Baathist regime, saying, “Lastly, I demand, in the name of all of you and in the name of the values you uphold, to allow the people the opportunity truly to exercise their right in running the affairs of the country by holding elections in which a council representing the people [Ummah] could truly emerge.”
Further, Sayedah Bent Al Huda was a political activist and a revolutionary author; whose short stories have express women’s voices and concerns. She was a resolute woman who stood fearlessly against the constant intimidation and cruelty of Saddam. Sayedah Bent Al Huda was an educator who established several religious schools for girls in Iraqi regions and played a pivotal role in creating Islamic awareness among women of Iraq. She perceived women’s sufferings and the great disasters which were damaging Islamic ideology in her country.
The Baathist regime feared Ayatollah Al-Sadr and his sister’s influential movement and thoughts on, both Secular and religious, Iraqi people. It arrested Ayatollah Al-Sadr various times. In the last arrest, and after ten months of house-arrest, Ayatollah Al-Sadr and his sister, where they were killed after being subjected to an extremely severe torture by the Baathists, for three consecutive days. It has been alleged that Ayatollah Al-Sadr was killed by the notorious dumped Saddam, himself, having an iron nail hammered into his head and then being set on fire. Meanwhile, Iraqi commemorate the anniversary after the ultimate defeat of ISIS. lSIS terrorists invaded Iraq, in 2014, and overtook around a third of the country’s expanse in exceptionally brutal attacks.
