Saddam Hussein preceded bin Laden as America’s iconic Muslim enemy

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. Shia Muslims like Hussein in Detroit counted him as a villain for persecuting their people, and they celebrated when his statue fell in Baghdad on April 9, 2003, shortly after the US launched the war in Iraq. There was celebrating again on Warren Avenue when that final fate befell the real Saddam on December 29, 2006. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 196

Categorization

• XREF: Supports a throughline with Iftikhar’s account of how America’s designated Muslim enemy shifts to fit policy needs.
• SEED: Angle for an essay on the churn of designated Muslim villains and what replaces each vanquished one.