Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘thist regime is often described as a Sunni regime which ruled over a Shi‘i majority population. Analyses of Iraq have often viewed the well-known persecution of prominent Shi‘i religious scholars and the neutering of Shi‘i institutions in an assumed context of Sunni sectarian policies. Thus, although the Shi‘a are a numerical majority, the literature often treats them as a political minority. In other words, like other minorities, the Shi‘a had to deal with the Sunni dominated state attempting to impose its hegemony over them. The recent release of the former regime’s archives has enabled a full study of this issue for the first time. These documents call for a reevaluation of this dynamic and a more nuanced view of Ba‘thist policies. In fact, little evidence of traditional Sunni sectarianism exists in the archive. This does not negate the persecution of Iraqi Shi‘a during Saddam’s presidency, or their self-identification as a political minority. It simply requires another explanation. In this paper, I argue that the persecution of Iraqi Shi‘a resulted from Ba‘thist attempts to eliminate sectarianism through the imposition of a generic Pan-Arab Islam. This generic Islam often contained certain Sunni assumptions and tendencies, but it should not be confused with Sunnism. In fact, Sunnis often protested when Saddam’s regime imposed the same Ba‘thist views of Islam on them. Nevertheless, these Ba‘thist policies, whatever their origin, led to decreased independence for Shi‘i religious institutions, the persecution of Shi‘i scholars, and the (inadvertent) increase of sectarian tensions. As these tensions developed, Iraqi Shi‘a came to view themselves a political minority defined against what they viewed as a sectarian Sunni state. Although, this sentiment did not reflect, and indeed was in direct contradiction to the intent of official Ba‘thist policies, it was, nonetheless, fundamental to the development of Shi‘i identity. The results of this dynamic (and the fact that it resulted from mutual misunderstanding) can still be felt in Iraq today.