Word: muqtada
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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...would be easy to dismiss Muqtada al-Sadr as little more than a street punk. That may be a mistake when dealing with a man who appears to have established himself as the de facto ruler of a huge chunk of Baghdad - the Shiite ghetto once known as Saddam City, now renamed Sadr City in honor of Muqtada's uncle, the legendary martyred anti-Saddam rebel cleric Muhammad Bakir al Sadr. Sadr City could be described as the Compton of Iraq, but its 2 million residents make up 8 percent of Iraq's entire population. A substantial domain, then...
...Muqtada's supporters are alleged to have been involved in the murder of pro-U.S. returned exile Ayatollah Abdel Majid al-Khoei at Najaf last month, and then briefly laid siege to the home of Iraq's supreme Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and demanded that Sistani leave Iraq. Some U.S. officials speculated that his fanatical supporters, who had worked underground, were a pro-Iran faction stirring up trouble. But it quickly emerged that Muqtada spelt trouble even for the leading Iran-backed Iraqi Shiite group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Muqtada - whose supporters...
...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...