Submitted by Terence Blackett

In the late 1990’s, Saddam Hussein sat for [24] tortuous months while almost [6] gallons of his blood was drained from his body as an Islamic calligrapher transcribed and etched [114] chapters of the Qu’ran in his blood. Twenty years on, this blood manuscript continues to cause political and religious polarization between the Shia led government and for some Sunnis though accepting that what Saddam did was haraam (forbidden), others realise the cultural, aesthetic and financial value of such a document. The document which has been locked away for years since the fall of Iraq in the Umm al-Ma’arik mosque is now a sore thumb for the Iraqi government because years of denial and a cloak of secrecy has turned into a spectre of damage limitation. This new Shia government realises that they cannot destroy this sacred text because of the anarchy that would take place across the Muslim world – neither can they ill-afford to open the doors to those Sunnis who will treat Saddam’s sacred blood legacy as divine approval and reverence for a holy text written in the blood of someone who is still viewed as a martyr.

Most Western political scholars as well as Judeo-Christian commentators tend to stay away from serious narratives on the internal religious rumblings within the volatile religion of Islam, fearing that discharacterization and ideological disinformation could result in “Fatwas” and the polarizing incendiary media protest we have all witnessed when the prophet Muhammad or Islam was brought into the spotlight with any negative connotations attached to them.

This modern pretext was already etched in blood by Salman Rushdie in doing the unthinkable by publishing the Satanic Verses in 1988 and the backlash which that revelation created and how it lasted for a decade or more. Since then, it has been one thing after another. Most notably has been recent revelations by Wikileaks which showed unequivocally the dissimilitude which exist within modern Arab tribal and religious politics and the complex nature of how war, infighting and civil instability between Muslims since the 600’s have shaped the current state of modern Muslim relations in the Middle East and around the world – where different strands of Islam are practiced and the increasing tensions which still exist between the [2] major groups, Shia and Sunni.

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