Word: muqtada
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...from exile, oil production is near prewar capacity, the country is rebuilding. Did we make any mistakes? Of course we did. The most egregious being not giving enough protection to the pro-Western Ayatullah Abdul-Majid al-Khoei, who was murdered, most likely by followers of the now notorious Muqtada al-Sadr...
...lack of jobs and the frustrating pace of the promised transition to Iraqi rule, a transition that promised to bring them to power. That simmering discontent last week turned into a full, chaos-inducing boil. Following a call to arms by a radical, power-hungry cleric named Muqtada al-Sadr, thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites declared war against a military that had freed them from a heinous dictator. In cities across Iraq, Shi'ite militants united behind the goal of casting off the yoke of occupation by killing or capturing any foreigner, military or civilian, they came across. Together with...
...minibuses in a Baghdad slum known as Sadr City. They would travel the 90-mile highway to the holy city of Kufa to lay their prayer mats inside the mosque, jockeying for a spot as close to the podium as possible. Whenever the white car carrying their leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, came into view, the scene would turn into pandemonium. Bodyguards with Kalashnikov ma-chine guns would struggle to carve out a path so al-Sadr could reach a platform beneath the arches. Once there, his speech was usually brief, but the point of his appearance was clear: to show...
...that is not Muqtada al-Sadr's way. He shares with the late Iranian revolutionary Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini a belief in rule by the clergy in a strict theocratic state. Al-Sadr's strategy, it now appears, is to engage coalition forces in a deadly confrontation, in the belief that Iraqi Shi'ites will support him in a direct showdown with the U.S. His rabid anti-Americanism, which previously failed to connect with the majority of Shi'ites, now strikes a chord. A year after the war began, their tolerance is exhausted. The lower rungs of society...
Among the many questions that remain unanswered is whether the horror in Fallujah represented an isolated spasm of mob violence or a more corrosive, widespread streak of anti-American hatred. On Saturday, Shi'ite followers of firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr marched and burned American flags, promising if asked to be the hand of Hamas and Hizballah in Iraq. But galling as the images in Fallujah were, U.S. commanders say the city and the surrounding area remain a uniquely difficult problem, with little bearing on what's happening in the rest of the country. The military continues to believe that...