Word: muqtada
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...that he'll accept the top job in a new government in the (rather unlikely) event its offered to him by the Americans: "The U.S. will ignore the opinion of the Iraqi people and it will compose the new government according to its own desires," Muqtada told a press conference this week. For that reason, he says, he will decline any offer to rule the new Iraq. "I don't want the chair of the government because it will be controlled by the U.S. and I don't want to be controlled by the U.S." When asked if that meant...
...conference as if to add gravity to his words, delivered with a lisp in colloquial Arabic peppered with street slang, rather than in eloquent classical Arabic more common among Shiite scholars and clerics. And, again unlike other Shiite leaders, he spoke bluntly and aggressively, without vague hints and innuendo. Muqtada professes no gratitude to the U.S. for ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein. He gives all the thanks...
...Unlike his father, Muqtada has no formal religious standing to interpret the Koran, and relies for religious authority on an Iran-based Iraqi exiled cleric, Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri. But he clearly believes he will himself assume the rank of marjah - the highest authority on religion and law in Shiism, in American pop-cultural terms a knight on the highest Jedi council. His father and uncle certainly provide him with an impeccable pedigree in terms of Iraqi Shiite martyrdom. Their names - along with Muqtada's - were chanted by thousands of worshipers making the pilgrimage to Karbala last week. He denies...
...Revealing some of the schisms even among supposedly Iranian-influenced Iraqi Shiites, Muqtada is disparaging of SCIRI's Hakim. "The followers of Sadr don't like Hakim because he betrayed the people of Basra and the south when he urged them to fight (in the 1991 anti-Saddam intifada), and didn't come in to help them, causing the intifada to fail...
...Asked about efforts to organize Shiite clerics to play a political role in the post-Saddam situation, Muqtada replied: "I reject all the Hawza that has relations with America and I reject everyone from the Hawza who is involved in politics. Anyone who seeks to be involved in politics should join hands with America." At the same time, however, Muqtada al-Sadr is promoting the involvement of clerics in public affairs, as against the more apolitical role for the imams envisaged by Sistani and others at Najaf, and urging that women be veiled and alcohol be banned throughout Iraq...