Rohan Pearce
Outside of Moqtada al Sadr, most clerics in the higher reaches of the Shiite hierarchy — such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq — have had ambivalent attitudes towards the US-led occupation.
Most have made anti-occupation statements and mobilised their supporters in mass protests with a pronounced anti-US character. But the aim of the ayatollahs has generally been to place pressure on the US to give them a bigger say in any Iraqi government set up by the occupiers.
Sadr, however, has won his authority among Shiites, not from his place in the Shia religious hierarchy, but from the stature of his deceased father — Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al Sadr, assassinated by Saddam Hussein's regime in 1999 — and his forthright anti-occupation stand.
When looting engulfed Baghdad after the US occupied the city last April, Sadr's followers — largely based in the Shiite slums of western Baghdad — organised the distribution of basic necessities. The Shiite slums, inhabited by about 1 million people, were located in Saddam City, which was renamed Sadr City — in honour of Moqtada's father.
In late 2003, pressure from the ayatollahs is believed to have forced Sadr to quiet down his fiery anti-occupation rhetoric. He announced, however, that he would be building an Islamic militia to fight the occupation forces — the Mahdi Army, named after the Arab army of Mohammed Ahmed El Mahdi which defeated the British occupation forces in Sudan in 1885.
The Coalition Provisional Authority has issued a warrant for Sadr's arrest because of his alleged involvement in the killing of Shiite scholar Majid al Khoei in April 2003. Khoei had been flown from Britain to Najaf by the US military, and supplied with millions of dollars to buy support for himself and the US occupiers.
At the time of his death at the hands of an angry crowd, Khoei had been with Haider al Kadr, long connected to Saddam Hussein's ministry of religion. The presence of Kadr had infuriated the crowd. "Kadr was an animal", a witness of the attack told the Associated Press wire service. "Everybody was afraid of him. The people were shouting that they hated him, that he should not be there."
From Green Left Weekly, April 21, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.