Saddam scrubbed from list of descendants of the Prophet Mohammed

AFP ^ | 12/17/03

[TexKat]

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The name of Saddam Hussein has been removed from the list of descendants of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, the head of the union of Ashrafs, who guard the genealogical tree, told AFP.

Al-Sherif Najeh Mohammed Hassan al-Faham al-Aaraji admitted that the ousted dictator had been able to cheat despite the great value and honour attached to the line which is guarded in Baghdad.

"Saddam had forced the origin experts to falsify his genealogical tree so that it went back to the Prophet," he said.

"We will inform all the experts, and particularly those who yielded to Saddam and agreed to falsify his genealogical tree. But the real trusted experts are very few in number and all refused."

Aaraji showed AFP a photo of Saddam's tree including a large book of origins which go back to the imams Hassan and Hussein, sons of the imam Ali bin Abi Taleb by his wife Fatima, a daughter of the Prophet.

The cancellation of Saddam's noble lineage was decided three days after his capture by US forces on Saturday night near Tikrit, in northern Iraq.

The Ashrafs' union was set up after the fall of the old regime on April 9 by the men who under Saddam were part of councils of the sayeds, or lords, descending from Hassan and Hussein.

The union has the backing of religious dignitaries from all Muslim traditions, including the hawza Shiite seminary in Najaf as well as the interim interior ministry, Aaraji said.

On Tuesday the union held its first congress "to build the new Iraq", attended by Sunni and Shiite ashrafs, representatives of the interim Governing Council and other Iraqi communities.

"The first committee of ashrafs was set up in Kufa (Iraq) in 830 in the era of the Abbasids," said Ahmad Khoder al-Abbasi, head of the Arab committee of origins.

It moved to Baghdad, which became a centre for similar committees from the Arab and Muslim world. In the 1800s, the Ottomans suspended its activities and in 1917 the British scrapped the union totally, Abbasi said.

[mewzilla]

Bummer. Hey does this mean he can eat pork now?

Unless they've changed the main ingredient in Spam, I think he was already :)

[Tijeras_Slim]

How dare you insult us Yankee Trash !

Got my bases covered, had family on both sides of the Civil War/War of Northern Aggression. :)

[azhenfud]

Must have been that Clump Sherman.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I'm thinkin' McClellan...

[My2Cents]

Hey! As a carpetbagging piece of Yankee trash, I resent that!

[Tijeras_Slim]

I guess that means no Christmas card... :-(

[TheSpottedOwl]

Unless they've changed the main ingredient in Spam, I think he was already :)

Spam is too good for that bum. For that matter so is Menudo and chitlins. Okay, chitlins are gross, so go ahead and dig in, Saddam >:-)

[joesnuffy]

I'd say he behaves perfectly like a descendant of the pedophile profit...

[Squawk 8888]

Got you beat there- I have ancestors from both sides of the Norman conquest in 1066, both sides of the Seven Years' War and both sides of the Battle of Trafalgar. What's a half-English/half-French/half Irish fella to do?

[Tijeras_Slim]

What's a half-English/half-French/half Irish fella to do?

I'm not sure, but fightin' and drinkin' comes to mind.

[RussianConservative]

Must it be Mad Arab Mohammed or just any quack Mohammed?

[CWOJackson]

"What's a half-English/half-French/half Irish fella to do?"Not become a mathematician...three halves?

[Montfort]

I can't imagine why he would not be a descendant of Mohammed when just about everyone else is. I think I am, as are most other folks who trace back to certain European monarchs, which is just about everyone in the US with European ancestry.

Someone else here will know the details better than I do, but as I remember it one of the English kings that a lot of Americans are descended from was descended from Muhammed.

[CWOJackson]

Considering two of the products he was subsisting on were canned ham and vienna sausages (which I'm sure also contain a hefty quality of a pork like substance), I think he's slipped in his Muslim faith a bit.

[TexKat]

For real, on one of the cable news reports when they were naming off stuff that they found in the kitchen area where Saddam was found in the hole, they found cans of SPAM.

[boxerblues]

He's also being kicked out of the Mayflower Descendents and the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The DAR has much stricter standards than he could ever produce

[My2Cents]

Maybe we can cheer up Saddam by sending him a nice Christmas ham.

[manic4organic]

So, he WAS a descendant before the wise old Islamist union figured out we really could kick his *ss. Now they decide he's not. Funny. Oh well, leave it to a union to be so lacking in ethics.

[oyez]

I wonder about that Spam thing. Surely Saddam has polluted himself with that stuff. Where does he go for absolution, Saddam being as religious man an all? I surprised that a country such as Iraq would even allow pork products cross its borders. Are they like the USA in prohibition times, when some on would go over to the county line for some bacon?

[TexKat]

And he had sticks of salami hanging from some sort of line.