Word: cleric
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that the country's squabbling factions could accept. A U.N. team arrived in Iraq last week to evaluate the coalition's plans for transition and assess the feasibility of holding broad-based elections before the June 30 deadline. The elections have been demanded by Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, but are resisted by U.S. officials, who say a general vote cannot be held safely. The intrigue deepened last Thursday when Sistani's bodyguards said the cleric had escaped an assassination attempt outside his home in Najaf. Sistani aides later told U.S. military officials that...
Behind the scenes, the place was buzzing. Aides and emissaries shuttled through the heavy wooden doors leading into Sistani's office, trying to determine whether the reclusive cleric, 75--the religious figure most revered by Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority--will bend in his opposition to the U.S. plan to hand over power by June 30 to a transitional Iraqi government chosen by an as-yet-undefined caucus system. Sistani says he will urge his followers to reject any new government unless it is directly elected. To those who met with him last week, Sistani seemed good-humored...
Sistani's background, however, suggests he prefers a different course. Born in Iran to a family of clerics, Sistani started memorizing the Koran at age 5, according to his official biography. In the early 1950s, he moved to the Iraqi city of Najaf, the site of one of the holiest shrines in Shi'ism. He later became a student of Grand Ayatullah Abul Khoei, who would turn out to be Iraq's leading cleric. As Saddam ruthlessly suppressed clerical activism, Khoei advocated "quietism," the belief that the clergy should mainly serve spiritual and social needs, and not focus on matters...
Sistani does have detractors among Shi'ites who argue that as an Iranian, he does not represent Iraqis. Some characterize his quietist approach as cowardly. Chief among Sistani's rivals is outspoken cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has built a following among poor, urban Shi'ites by calling on them to resist the U.S. occupation...
...insisted it can't comply with demands from Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatullah Ali al-Sistani, that the first post-Saddam government be established via nationwide direct elections. U.S. officials say that would be too difficult to pull off before the June 30 deadline for the transfer of power. Instead, the U.S. wants the new government to be chosen by local caucuses. Ahead of meetings in New York City this week with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian chief in Iraq, said, "We have doubts, as does the Secretary-General, that elections...