Word: cleric
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Osama bin Laden is not a cleric, and his movement's policies and strategies have been formulated on a political basis. As former CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht noted three years ago, "Bin Laden's vision was designed to appeal to the larger Muslim world. His primary target is the enemy without, the United States, not the enemy within, the 'impious' Muslims. The goal is to unify Muslims, not to divide them by doctrine or even by the intensity of their faith." Gerecht cites passages from key policy documents of al-Qaeda stressing the need for bin Laden's supporters...
...after Mahmoud Shakir Mohsen arrested a member of the religious militia, the religious militia arrested him. "They told me, 'Your time is over,'" says the police sergeant. "'Now it's our time.'" Bound and blindfolded, Mohsen was taken to the Islamic courts of Muqtada al-Sadr, the most militant cleric in the holy city of Najaf, where he was beaten with a police baton and held in an underground prison for 16 days, until his commanding officer negotiated a $200 fee for his release...
...accused of peddling pornography have had their shops bombed. The court's claim of religious sanction is particularly potent in Najaf, where portraits of religious leaders have replaced statues of Saddam Hussein. While al-Sadr's critics may whisper that his courts are more concerned with stamping out the cleric's enemies than with doing God's work, few dare say it aloud. "The most important man in Najaf can't say no to this court," says Saeed Tryak al-Jubori, a senior police officer in the city...
...Free Elections for Iraq Your article "Dealing with the Cleric" reported on the objections of Iraq's Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani to the U.S. plan to turn over control of Iraq by June 30 to a transitional government chosen by a caucus system rather than by direct elections [Feb. 2]. One thing seems clear: President George W. Bush started a war that has claimed hundreds of American lives, and now he wants to have a nice, friendly handover of governance just in time for the U.S. presidential election. Meanwhile, the Iraqis lose out on having a true democracy, something...
...plan - even the IGC has now reneged on its support for the procedure - has left it dead in the water. Discussion is currently under way over an alternative, possibly expanding the IGC to include political actors with significant support that are currently outside of it, such as the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The IGC is reportedly also considering the option of a new provisional government being appointed by a national gathering of stakeholders, convened not under the auspices of the U.S. or the IGC, but rather by the UN or the Arab League. Washington's tutelage of Iraq...