Word: clerics
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Harith al-Dari is a wanted man - and the warrant for his arrest is the best thing that could have happened to him. By issuing the warrant Thursday, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has turned the dimunitive Iraqi cleric into a Sunni hero and a symbol of his community's angst and anger...
...Even for a government that has shown all the political subtlety of a rampaging rhinoceros, this was an especially maladroit maneuver - and al-Dari's clerical organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars, has moved swiftly to capitalize on it. The Association's spokesmen have accused the Shi'ite prime minister of deliberately stoking sectarian tensions by singling out a 65-year-old Sunni cleric for arrest when tens of thousands of murderous Shi'ite militias and their leaders enjoy the protection of the government. They have also pointed out that a 2004 warrant for the arrest of radical...
...terms, the arrest warrant is unlikely to threaten al-Dari's freedom: He spends much of his time shuttling from Amman, Jordan, to other Sunni Arab capitals, none of which are about to seize him and hand him over to the Iraqis. In political terms, the warrant gives the cleric a gilt-edged opportunity to stage a dramatic comeback after a long spell in limbo...
...Sunnis do not have a single dominant cleric in the way that the Shi'ites have in the person of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Al-Dari may head the AMS, which claims to include the imams of over 3,000 mosques, but unlike Sistani, he has never been able to mobilize the Sunni street. Despite the AMS's call for a boycott of the general election last December, Sunnis voted in large numbers. And even though al-Dari has heaped condemnation on the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), it has emerged as an important force in Sunni politics. An IIP leader...
...rallying to al-Dari. Many feel victimized by the Shi'ite political establishment and now see al-Dari as the personification of their community's predicament. On Sunni TV channels, newspapers and Internet bulletin boards, there is an outpouring of vitriol against the government and support for the cleric. A typical message reads: "We are your swords, O Lion Sheikh - From the people of Adhamiya." (Adhamiya is a Sunni-dominated neighborhood of Baghdad.) Several Sunni groups - insurgent, political and social - have paid "homage" to him, which is akin to naming him their spiritual leader...