Word: muqtada
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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...cities (and in Baghdad's largest neighborhoods) have suppressed looting, mounted security patrols and restored basic services. But the Hawza comprises different factions: Its leader is Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who advocates keeping the clergy out of directly political roles. But that view is challenged by the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, acting in the name of his father and uncle, both legendary anti-Saddam clerics murdered by the regime, whose agitation for the creation of an Islamic state may be anathema to Washington. Involvement by the SCIRI and Dawa in the process help give it a strong Shiite presence...
...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...
...murder of Ayatollah al-Khoei, for which two of Muqtada's guards have been arrested, Muqtada denies involvement. "I expelled Mustafa Yaqubi and Sheik Kais (the men arrested) and we beat them," he says, insisting that he had tried to protect Khoei. "I tried to save him. I sent my men to announce on loudspeakers that all arms should be laid down. I tried to go out to help Khoei, but I was threatened with the same fate as him if I went...
...That remains a distinct possibility in the high-stakes battle for dominance among Iraq's majority Shiite population. But it's a possibility for which Muqtada is ready. "I am not afraid," he says. "I wish to be a martyr, and I don't fear death...