A secular tyrant could win legitimacy by adopting religious identity

Evidence

Saddam Hussein, like primary participants in other fault line wars, identified his previously secular regime with the cause that would have the broadest appeal: Islam. Given the U-shaped distribution of identities in the Muslim world, Saddam had no real alternative. This choice of Islam over either Arab nationalism or vague Third World anti-Westernism, one Egyptian commentator observed, “testifies to the value of Islam as a political ideology for mobilizing support.” Although Saudi Arabia is more strictly Muslim in its practices and institutions than other Muslim states, except possibly Iran and Sudan, and although it had funded Islamist groups throughout the world, no Islamist movement in any country supported the Western coalition against Iraq and virtually all opposed Western intervention. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 688

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends the earlier chapter’s discussion of the U-shaped identity distribution in Muslim societies and how civilizational identity outranks national identity for mobilization. — connects to: Religious claims adopted for instrumental legitimacy can come to genuinely saturate the adopting movement. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 512; Governing dynasties can contractually institutionalize a religious-ideological alliance for internal legitimacy. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 191