He was an Alawite, which to both Shiites, Sunnis and Suffis meant that he was no sort of Muslim at all, and as a National Socialist Baathist, he suppressed Muslims left and right, gas a Kurdish village here, imprison a Shiite cleric or ten there. What he wanted with these writings remains a mystery to me, unless he was trying to use them for some mumbo jumbo-type magic to keep himself in power. Hitler used to have an astrologer, until he killed him. Nazis are a cowardly and superstitious lot.
“He was an Alawite, which to both Shiites, Sunnis and Suffis meant that he was no sort of Muslim at all, and as a National Socialist Baathist, he suppressed Muslims left and right, gas a Kurdish village here, imprison a Shiite cleric or ten there.”
All true, however none of that reduced how much he had to sell himself to the general public as a “good Muslim” and all the more so because he was an Alawite and not a Sunni or Shia. Besides suppressing Jews in Iraq he also had to lift the “Muslim” banner against Israel - to prove himself to Sunni and Shia backers of “the Palestinians”.