8 Hafez al-Asad offered a new identity and bargain through a secular ideology of pan-Arab socialism called
Ba'athism.
Since dismantling Saddam's version of
Ba'athism, which many viewed as a cover for Sunni-minority rule, Iraq's Shia leaders have done little to soften the blow-an approach that has not gone unnoticed elsewhere in the region.
Hill asserts that sectarianism had been present in the region the entire time; however, the rulers, as in the case of
Ba'athism in Iraq, had resorted to policies mainly focusing on civic identity so as to bar sectarianism and to preserve Iraq.
Another sub-section on the Ba'ath party is interestingly missing a basic definition of
Ba'athism itself.
In the collaborative management of the region by the Saudis and the West in pursuit of the many western projects (countering socialism,
Ba'athism, Nasserism, Soviet and Iranian influence), western politicians have highlighted their chosen reading of Saudi Arabia (wealth, modernization and influence), but they chose to ignore the Wahhabist impulse.
And, though some Shia, especially secularists, joined the Ba'ath party to survive in Saddam's system,
Ba'athism was broadly and correctly understood to be a kind of secular fig leaf for Sunni minority rule.
On Syria's Alawis For those Alawis who have no alternative ideology or self-identification, the fall of
Ba'athism is unthinkable.
It broadly remains the cradle of the Pan Arab ideal of
Ba'athism, standing alone, since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Ba'athism, its Near Eastern alter ego, likewise became a victim of the personal rivalry between Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Hafez al Assad of Syria, both, it should be noted, minority leaders in their own countries whose own communities enjoyed a high degree of favour under British and French rule respectively.
Geagea said that a second danger which might pose a threat to the Christians in Lebanon "is the way Syrians view Lebanon, especially that it is driven by the residues of old
Ba'athism and Nationalism which consider Lebanon not an independent entity but part of Syria.
The Muslim world includes the secular Arab nationalist movements of
Ba'athism and Nasserism; Saudi Arabia's dominant and strict Wahhabism; the revolutionary, millennialist dogma of the ruling Shi'ites in Iran and their Middle Eastern satellites; the Kemalist secular, republican, and statist tradition of Turkey; the tolerant and multicultural societies and capitalist economies of Indonesia and Malaysia; the radical Islamists of South and Central Asia; Westernized, multiethnic, multi-religious Lebanon; and Muammar Qaddafi's strict and somewhat bizarre Islamic revolutionary system in Libya.
To assist the reader, the opening section provides a brief cultural immersion in
Ba'athism, Saddamism, and the geopolitical environment in which Iraq existed leading up to OIF.
