Word: cleric
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...when they vowed earlier in the week to finish the fight and break the back of Sadr's forces. The new pause in hostilities to seek a negotiated solution - and the urgency with which the new government and U.S. commanders sought to deny claims by Sadr aides that the cleric had been wounded in battle on Friday - signal a growing awareness on the part of Allawi's government that winning the battle at Najaf could cost them the wider political...
...anything, Sadr's decision to confront Allawi and the Americans from inside the holy city reflects a canny, and often underestimated political instinct on the part of the populist cleric. Ever since Baghdad fell to U.S. forces in April 2003, Sadr has parlayed his strong following among the Shiite urban poor and the growing resentment toward the U.S. to his own advantage. And his previous showdown with the U.S. - last April, when they tried to arrest him in connection with a warrant issued by an Iraqi judge - had showed that tangling with the Americans actually boosted, rather than undermined...
...Allawi appears to have recognized Sadr's influence, because he has strenuously attempted to woo the cleric to join the political process under the interim government. He reiterated his offer on Thursday. "This government calls upon all the armed groups to drop their weapons and rejoin society," Allawi said in a statement. "The political process is open to all, and everyone is invited to take part in it." But Sadr has rejected the terms, refusing to be recognized simply as one among hundreds of leaders, many of whom have no proven constituency. And his refusal to withdraw his forces from...
...Moqtada Sadr's exhortations to battle, his willingness to extend the confrontation throughout southern Iraq and also into Baghdad, and the failure thus far of all efforts to cajole him back into a truce, suggest the firebrand cleric is feeling lucky. By inviting the U.S. military to invade the spiritual epicenter of Iraqi Shiism, the new government risks fatally undermining its prospects for establishing legitimacy among Iraq's majority community. Even though the Sadrists have provoked the confrontation, the prevailing animosity towards the U.S. forces among ordinary Shiites will likely play to Moqtada's advantage in his political challenge...
...service story was read to him. Others confirm that two years ago, Bernard Cardinal Law was denied permission to do the same thing when he was Boston Archbishop. They suspect Vlazny asked no one's leave. "The official position was that this was not an option," says a U.S. cleric. "There's a boldness to what [Vlazny] did." But perhaps the boldness of folly. "Next thing you know," the cleric quips sourly, "you've got the relics on eBay...