Saddam Hussein, a secularist, was the primary Muslim enemy before bin Laden.

Evidence

Saddam Hussein, with his mustachioed face, embodied Islamic threat during the decade before the War on Terror. Before Osama bin Laden, it was the secularist Hussein who provided the expanding American empire in the region with an easily identifiable Muslim enemy. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 196

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the global-synthesis view with Iftikhar: the US casting of a secular Ba’athist as Islamic threat shows the ideological plasticity of the Muslim-enemy frame.