Word: clerical
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Though American officials recognize the importance of Sadr's inactivity, they are now saying that the cleric's political influence in Iraq has diminished. On Thursday, the senior diplomat overseeing U.S. policy in Iraq, David Satterfield, told a roomful of foreign policy experts at the Middle East Institute that the 34-year-old cleric was a "deeply troubled young man" who is spending most of his time in Iran watching events in Iraq move "beyond his ability to influence." Those are strong words about the surviving scion of a revered religious family who has proven time and again...
Satterfield said Sadr's political influence has waned since November 2006, when the cleric "made a political gamble and lost." That was when Sadr withdrew his party's ministers from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's cabinet after Maliki refused to set a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal. When the government did not collapse, Satterfield argued, the limits of al-Sadr's political power were exposed. That's when Maliki no longer felt the need to protect his biggest constituent in Parliament and gave U.S. forces the green light to enter Sadr City, the cleric's popular stronghold in north...
...workers bused in from the slums of Sadr City in Baghdad 100 miles to the north. I was hearing rumors that his followers were kidnapping and beating religious students who criticized him. The Coalition Provisional Authority was dithering about whether to arrest him on charges of killing a rival cleric the April before. To most observers, including myself, he seemed to be a thug with a lot of bluster and little substance...
...Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought. As Bishop of Durham, he is the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England and a major player in the strife-riven global Anglican Communion; as a much-read theologian and Biblical scholar he has taught at Cambridge and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event...
...reflection of Baghdad's continuing dysfunction came in the vote on the law: roughly half the parliament didn't show. Moreover, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki still faces a boycott by the country's largest Sunni bloc, the Accordance Front, and followers of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr...