Word: ayatullah
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...truth, there are three possible paths to an Iraqi provisional government, and each has problems. The easiest and worst would be to simply turn over authority to the current Governing Council, which has too many questionable Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi and too little input from the Grand Ayatullah Ali Sistani, the most powerful Shi?a cleric, or the general Sunni populace. The Bush Administration's chosen path is more responsible but too slow-write a new constitution, have a referendum on that constitution and then hold general elections. Colin Powell has set a six-month target for the constitution...
Whoever they turn out to be, the man was right. They had. Among the more than 80 people who died when a car bomb exploded outside the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, 120 miles south of Baghdad, was Ayatullah Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, one of the nation's most senior Shi'ite clerics and the founder of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). He had been leading the Friday prayers in the mosque. The atrocity was the most devastating event since the end of formal hostilities in the Iraq war and counts...
...first the Ayatullah's fate was unclear. The blast occurred moments after the Friday morning prayers, and most of those outside believed he had not yet left the shrine to Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, in the heart of Najaf. Assuming that al-Hakim was still inside, many had thought he would have been protected from the explosion by the shrine's massive western wall and its huge door, the Bab-e-Kibbleh, which remained standing. But when the bomb went off, the 64-year-old cleric was outside the shrine and about to get into...
...just returned from exile in London. (At the time, al-Sadr told TIME that the bodyguards involved had been dismissed before the assassination and that he had nothing to do with the killing of al-Khoei.) In April, al-Sadr's supporters surrounded the home of Grand Ayatullah Ali Sistani, supreme religious leader of Iraqi Shi'ites, and demanded that he leave the country. Sistani was saved by American troops...
...unspoken argument for hand-picking Iraqis is Washington's paranoia that in free elections, Iranian-backed fundamentalists will dominate the Shiites, and as 60% of the population, the Shiites will dominate Iraq. The Bush Administration fears they will replace Saddam with Khomeini. But Grand Ayatullah Ali Sistani is the top Shiite cleric in Iraq and he opposes theocractic rule. Rather than leading chants of "Death to America," he's been working quietly to help restore order. But the moderates will lose if America is seen to be marginalizing the Shiites. They win if the Shiites see that America is helping...