Word: muqtada
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There's another reason that Iraq is likely to resist Iran's influence: Muqtada al-Sadr. Ironically, the Shi'ite leader America fears most is also the one feared most in Tehran. Al-Sadr is a thug, but he's a nationalist. He wants a strong central government in Baghdad, not a Shi'ite mini-state in Iraq's south. As Ray Takeyh notes in his book, Hidden Iran, Tehran's mullahs fund al-Sadr to cover their bets, but distrust and dislike...
...accompanied by low theatrics instead of high drama. After all, he had ruled for nearly three decades by a crude medieval code that vulgarized Iraqi public life. And yet the former dictator's final moments--the screams of "Go to hell" from spectators at the gallows, the taunts of "Muqtada, Muqtada" by guards evidently loyal to Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr--were undignified even by Saddam's standards. As if to block out the barbs, Saddam loudly intoned his final prayer, the traditional Islamic invocation to God and the Prophet Muhammad. But that too was cut short: without warning...
...traced to the mass murder of Shi'ites that the dictator ordered in the 1990s. Saddam's malevolence indirectly begat al-Sadr, who was destined to a quiet life in the seminary of Najaf until Saddam in 1999 ordered the murder of his father and two older brothers, thrusting Muqtada into the limelight. But Iraq's sectarian hatreds are rooted in religious, social and economic resentments stretching back over 1,000 years. Like rulers before him, Saddam exploited the Shi'ite-Sunni divide for his own purposes. The scenes from his execution suggest Iraq's new rulers...
...phone, we now know that the Iraqi National Police unit we turned Saddam over to was in fact a Shi'a lynch mob. Saddam's hangmen made no effort to hide their allegiance, taunting the deposed Iraqi leader with the name of radical Shi'ite cleric and power broker Muqtada al-Sadr. Afterwards, they danced around Saddam's corpse...
...Just as consequential, for Sunnis and anyone else who knows Iraqi history, Saddam's executioners shouted the name of Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Muqtada's father-in-law. Ayatollah Sadr, whom Saddam executed in 1980, is perhaps as responsible as Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini for modern, resurgent Shi'a Islam. Sadr founded the Da'wa Party, a violent, secretive organization committed to the creation of an Iraqi Shi'a Islamic republic - and today a political party that counts none other than Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a member...