02-04-2007, 11:28 AM
SECTARIANISM : THE WEST'S SECRET WEOPON IN ITS WAR ON ISLAM
http://www.muslimedia.com/abudhar205.htm
All over the world, the confrontation between the forces of Islam and kufr is intensifying, with the forces of the Islamic movement taking on the kuffar – represented in the modern world by the zionist-US dominated West – in many very different ways. And all over the world, we are seeing the kuffar hitting back in one very dangerous way: the promotion of sectarianism and internal discord among Muslims.
In Iran, for the first time in contemporary history, the leaders of the Islamic state have taken the initiative to open up the most controversial issue in imperialist-zionist circles: the so-called holocaust. Despite all the Western liberal propaganda about “freedom of speech”, this is a part of the zionist mythology that has never been put on the table and openly debated with open minds and without prejudice. The centrality of the holocaust in the zionist justification for their occupation of Palestine is such that those who want to counter them must address it. However, like anything else that Islamic Iran does to support the Palestinians, this move will no doubt be used by the zionists to spin more accusations against them, and to justify their own plans against the Islamic State. At the same time the Islamic leadership in Lebanon represented by Hizbullah, leading a coalition of other patriotic Lebanese and anti-zionist forces, are slow-roasting the American-sponsored government of the Saudi affiliate Fuad Siniora. In occupied Palestine, the refusal of the beleaguered Hamas movement to compromise has forced the Palestinian president Mahmud ‘Abbas to expose himself as the spearhead of zionist and imperialist provocations. Isma‘il Haniyyah returns from a tour of Muslim countries with tens of millions of dollars for the foodless Palestinian people, and the old guard of Fatah harass him at the border, prevent him from bringing money into Palestine, and then try to assassinate him. Desperate people do desperate things; and the politicians of the PLO are showing themselves willing to inflict any degree of suffering on the Palestinians in order to try to protect the political empire they have built in the Palestinian Authority.
Meanwhile political pressure is being felt in the cities of Washington and Tel Aviv. The US capitalist establishment, seeing its domination threatened by the fall-out of the Iraq fiasco, are telling Bush and his coterie that they must deal with Tehran and Damascus to get things sorted. Some are even talking about reaching a “grand bargain” after detailed negotiations on a broad range of issues. In other diplomatic and political quarters, the sirens are sounding the alarm about the ascendancy of Tehran in the whole Middle East. As the smoke begins to clear, it appears to some observers that the US is on the run across the Middle East: Iraq is more than a disaster; Lebanon is less than a success; Afghanistan is slipping away; and Saudi Arabia is in the twilight zone. The American imperium is dangerously close to failing; and yet, like a cornered animal, the Bush administration is as dangerous and aggressive as ever.
Knowing that direct military confrontation has got them nowhere in the Islamic world – a lesson they should have learnt years ago, from Saddam Hussein's total failure to defeat Islamic Iran in the 1980s – the Anglo-American-Israeli axis of evil is now reverting to a last-ditch strategy: exploiting the sectarian fault-lines within the Ummah in order to weaken the enemy that they face. The Sunni/Shi‘i schism is the last diplomatic bombshell in their political arsenal, and Iraq – poor suffering, burning Iraq – is where this bombshell has been detonated, to spread its poisonous fall-out across the Middle East. All talk of a democratic Iraq is finished now; now the US's closest ally in the Muslim world, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, wants to come to the rescue of its Sunni brothers in Iraq. Forget about its Sunni brothers in Palestine; their decades of struggle and suffering against zionists merit no Saudi assistance. But the Sunni Muslims of Iraq are must be encouraged and assisted to fight against the Shi'i Muslims alongside whom they have lived peaceably for years. But it is not the love of Sunni Muslims that motivates the politics and the policies of the Saudi ruling family; it is rather the instructions and guidelines that come to them from Washington – and if things continue to develop as they have been in recent years, the orders will soon be arriving in Riyadh directly from Tel Aviv, instead of taking the indirect route through Washington.
So what is the new political development in Iraq that will save the administration in Washington, or at least help it create a more favorable political climate before the presidential elections in less than two years time? The answer is as simple as it is bloody: sectarian warfare leading to the break-up of Iraq. For the US, violence that can be blamed on sectarianism has the advantage of being somebody else's fault, while the “inevitable” break-up of the country and the establishment of pro-Western rulers in at least parts of it can be presented as a success of sorts. So the Saudi government, which has placed tight restrictions on fund-raising and contributions to Islamic charities and brotherhoods around the world, is now funding Sunni groups in Iraq. For this deadly game to work, the Iranians will have to finance and support Shi‘i sectarians in Iraq. This, of course, is not something that the US and Israel can order, as they can give orders to Riyadh; however, they confidently expect, and are probably not wrong, that Tehran will play along as a matter of national interest or “Shi‘i solidarity.”
There are two words coming into vogue in this new zionist-imperialist scheme; they are Wahhabi and Safawi, used by Shi'is and Sunnis respectively to label and condemn their opponents. If things continue to slide down this dangerous sectarian slope, two stronger words will become more common; they are already being heard in places. These are nawasib and rawafid respectively. These two words were the “nigger” words for Sunnis and Shi‘is way back in the early centuries of Islam, when sectarianism reached a fanatical climax. Recently around 40 ulama’ in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia signed an edict that virtually declares open hostilities against Shi‘is. The timing could not be more crucial as it comes just weeks before the annual hajj in Makkah. We can only pray that the fanatics will not ignite their sectarian fuel in the Holy Lands at these Holy Times. However, whatever happens or does not happen during this hajj season should not prevent us from viewing the larger picture, in which officials and politicians in Egypt, Jordan, and Arabia are seeing a “Shi‘i arc” extending from Central Asia to the Mediterranean. They fear that, at the minimum, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon will become one political bloc. This governmental mindset has to take a sectarian course of action; therefore, protecting the Sunnis, according to this twisted and maligned logic, begins with fighting the Shi‘is in Iraq. The fear hiding behind this fear is the zionist fear of an Islamic bloc of people (140 million) on its northern border.
If the sectarian bomb explodes in Iraq, the fall-out could contaminate Muslims around the world. Let us not be drawn into this massive political and “religious” trap. Let us, both Sunnis and Shi‘is, confess that we all have our own types of fanatics, and let us take the lead in opposing the fanatics on our own side, instead of contributing to the polarization by pointing the finger only at fanatics on the other side. If the Islamic State in Iran cannot do that with the Shi‘i component of the Ummah, and the wider Islamic movement cannot do that with the Sunni component of the Ummah, we will almost inevitably find ourselves moving down a path of self-destruction. In recent times our relative solidarity has caused our enemies to split, divide and shatter. Now is the worst possible time to listen to sectarians, schismatics and stooges who are working to promote the zionist-imperialist agenda.
POISON OF SECTARIANISM SPREADING THROUGH THE UMMAH FROM IRAQ
http://www.muslimedia.com/editor205a.htm
Painful though it is to admit it (it would be so much easier to focus on the successful resistance to the US occupation), it is undeniable that the communal strife in Iraq is resulting in a frightening increase in sectarian tensions throughout the Muslim world. US policies after the invasion institutionalised Iraq’s communal divide, but until the bombing of the Askariyya shrine in Samarra on February 22 it was possible to regard the sectarianism as a unfortunate side-issue that could be resolved by inter-communal dialogue, confidence-building measures and a process of reconciliation between the various political and communal groups. But the Askariyya bombing unleashed an orgy of blood-letting that appears to have obliterated every trace of the restraint, sanity, ethics and even human reason and decency that are required to keep the animal instincts of mankind in check.
The tactics employed in the butchery in Iraq are becoming increasingly brutal. The scenes are all too familiar. Everyday scores of Iraqis are being kidnapped and killed, and their mutilated bodies dumped in the streets, rivers and open fields. There have been reports of patients being abducted from hospitals and killed. Suicide-bombings and military-style attacks have been launched against unarmed civilian gatherings, neighbourhoods, mosques and other houses of worship. Iraqi security forces are at best standing idly by while such heinous acts are being committed, and at worst colluding with them or even taking part in them. Ethnic cleansing (or sectarian cleansing to be more accurate) has turned previously-mixed neighbourhoods, villages, towns and even parts of some provinces into uniformly Sunni or Shi‘i areas.
The tragedy unfolding in Iraq has been accompanied by a corresponding rise in the tempo of sectarian discourse. Derogatory terminology culled from crude, outdated, chauvinistic and narrow-minded sectarian polemics, which feed on a simplistic, prejudiced and distorted reading of Islamic history, are gaining more currency. More and more Sunni Arabs in Iraq have taken to calling Shi‘as “rawafid”(rejectionists), “Safavids” and “Buyids” (Buwayhids). Shi‘as in turn have taken to calling Sunnis “nawasib” (enemies of the Ahl al-Bayt), “Umayyads” and “Wahhabis”. It is a measure of the levels that the sectarian discourse has reached that Adnan al-Dulaymi, the leader of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in Iraq's parliament, used almost unimaginable language at the Conference for the Support of the Iraqi People in Istanbul on December 13-14. “It is a sectarian war. It is a sectarian conflict that aims to destroy the Sunnis,” an enraged Dulaymi shouted from the pulpit. “Anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong and must reconsider his position,” he added before declaring : “Yes, we are sectarian!”
Such language is matched by implicitly sectarian attitudes masquerading as concerns for law and order among Shi‘i leaders who are in government. During a recent visit to Washington, Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who heads the largest Shi‘a bloc in the Iraqi parliament, called on the US-led coalition forces to employ more lethal force against Sunni insurgents. Speaking at the US Institute for Peace, after talks with president George W Bush, he said: “The strikes [the insurgents] are getting from the multinational forces are not hard enough to put an end to their acts... Eliminating the danger of the civil war in Iraq can only be achieved through directing decisive strikes against the takfiri [those who excommunicate other Muslims, declaring them kafirs] terrorists and Ba'athist terrorists in Iraq.”
Both sides, of course, blame the other for starting this process. For the Shi‘i’s, the fault lies with the anti-Shi‘i sectarianism of al-Qa‘ida and associated militants who have come to Iraq to join the resistance; Sunnis blame the Shi‘is for preferring to joining the US’s power structure, rather than making a common cause against the invaders. Both explanations have an element of truth. But it is also true that many on both sides were predisposed to communal and sectarian understandings of the situation, and quick to act on such grounds rather than seeking out other bases for understanding and action. This must be counted as a massive failure on the part of Islamic leaders of both communities, particularly after their promising cooperation early in the occupation.
Even more disturbing is the fact that echoes of this exclusivist and sectarian discourse are now appearing and getting louder in other parts of the Muslim world. These echoes are partly rooted in the same popular tendency towards sectarian attitudes that we saw in Iraq; but are also being encouraged by Arab regimes concerned about the increasing influence of Islamic Iran. The strong passions that sectarian prejudices arouse provide rulers in many parts of the Muslim world with a useful means of distracting their people from more dangerous (to the rulers) political issues. Thus we see sectarian ideas being deployed by secular regimes and politicians (whose commitment to any aspect of the deen is at best tenuous) to serve selfish political interests. As long ago as December 2004, King Abdallah II of Jordan told an American journalist that “If it was a Shi'a-led Iraq that had a special relationship with Syria and Hizbollah and Lebanon, then we have this new crescent that appears that will be very destabilizing for the Gulf countries and for the whole region.”
Sectarian prejudices foster unnecessary “us”-versus-”them” divisions and barriers that undermine the Islamic concept of a unified community of believers that transcends all other identities – the Ummah. As such, it nurtures indifference, callousness and selective compassion towards the suffering of fellow Muslims. An example is the verbal brawl that erupted in the Bahraini parliament in November 2004 over a proposed motion to condemn the US-led assault against Fallujah. The appalling destruction of Fallujah should have been unreservedly condemned by all Muslims; instead, the motion proposed by Sunni MPs was opposed by their Shi‘a colleagues, arguing that it amounted to supporting “terrorists” in Iraq. In the end, a compromise was reached: a hollow statement censuring the death of civilians. Last month, Sunni and Shi‘i Islamic groups both did well in Bahrain’s parliamentary elections. Working together, they could achieve a great deal. But there are already signs that sectarian differences will prevent this.
The demons of sectarianism, conveying a message of hate, inciting Muslim-on-Muslim violence, fostering internecine conflict and obstructing inter-communal harmony, are perhaps the greatest internal threat facing the Ummah and the Islamic movement today. Muslims need to break this vicious cycle of sectarian mudslinging; only a zero-tolerance approach is acceptable. Any failure in this regard will simply fuel the fire of sectarian bigotry, encouraging violence between Muslims, and playing into the hands of those who wish to see us divided, weak and subservient to the powers of modern kufr. Iraq may be all but lost; the rest of the Ummah must not be allowed to follow the same tragic path.
MUSLIM SECTARIANISM A PART OF THE US AGENDA
February 2007 / REFLECTIONS by Zafar Bangash
http://www.muslimedia.com/reflect0207.htm
It is difficult to say which is worse: nationalism or sectarianism in the Ummah. The ruling elites in the Muslim world exploit both these weaknesses to advance their own nefarious agendas. Just as nationalism is alien to the political culture of Islam, so sectarianism is the very antithesis of Muslim unity. While most Muslims have little reason to indulge in divisive polemic against fellow Muslims, there are groups within the Ummah whose survival depends on keeping us divided.
Let us consider two recent developments: Hizbullah's successful resistance to zionist aggression in Lebanon last summer and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's standing up to the US. The first elevated Hizbullah leader Shaikh Seyyed Hasan Nasrallah's stature among the Muslim masses, while the second turned Ahmedinejad into a symbol of the courage and defiance so lacking in other Muslim rulers. The popularity of both shot up among Muslims all over the world. Their photographs were prominently displayed in people's homes and in restaurants and coffee shops throughout the Middle East. It did not matter that both are Shi‘a; people instinctively identified with them because their stature and conduct stood in sharp contrast with the spineless cowardice habitually displayed by their own rulers.
These developments clearly alarmed other Muslim rulers and the US, who are struggling to neutralize them. When the two Abdullahs, Saudi and Jordanian, condemned Hizbullah, the Muslim masses reacted angrily and both men had to back down. Their retreat, however, was tactical; aware that the elation at Hizbullah's victory and Ahmedinejad's courage would dissipate in the face of new problems, real or imagined, they waited for an opportune moment to strike back. They did not have to wait long. The US, too, the main loser in these developments, needed to recover lost ground.
In October, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a highly publicized trip to the Middle East to rally “moderate regimes” against the “extremists”, meaning Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas and Syria. In December, members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) met in Bahrain to offer their own pearls of wisdom about confronting extremists. Rice was in the region again in mid-January to mobilize the Arab dinosaurs for a confrontation with the forces of Islam. By this time, events in Iraq, grossly mishandled by the incompetent Iraqi government, were effectively supporting the US effort. “The reality of the current situation is that we are approaching an open Sunni-Shi'ite conflict in the region,” Emad Gad, a specialist in international relations at the government-financed Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, told the New York Times on January 17. “And Egypt will also be a part of it as a part of the Sunni axis. No one will be able to avoid or escape it.” Egypt is not alone in stoking sectarianism; the Saudis are even worse. They fear the growing power of Iran as a threat to their illegitimate rule. Abdul Rahman al-Barak, a Saudi ‘alim close to the ruling family, has described the Shi‘a, whom he referred to by the derogatory term ar-rafideen (the rejectionists), as worse than Jews and Christians.
Members of the GCC also jumped on Rice's anti-Iran bandwagon when their foreign ministers met in Kuwait on January 16. The communiqué they issued must have sounded like music to American ears: “The participants welcomed the commitment by the United States as stated in President Bush's recent speech [January 10] to defend the security of the Gulf, the territorial integrity of Iraq and to ensure a successful, fair and inclusive political process that engages all Iraqi communities and guarantees the stability of the country.” Their concern about inclusiveness would be more convincing had Iraq under Saddam been a model for inclusiveness or if the regimes themselves were so inclined. Their concern is more mundane: to join America's anti-Iran crusade because they fear Iran's growing influence. To undermine Iran, they are willing to resort to crude tactics: fan sectarian tensions by financing it on behalf of the US.
All this is, unfortunately, nothing new; some parts of the Ummah have a long history of falling into the sectarian trap. Soon after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger convened a secret meeting in Cairo to instigate Shi‘a-Sunni conflict by staging an uprising against the regime in either Sudan or Syria. The plan was to embarrass Iran. If Tehran supported the uprising, it would disrupt its relations with these regimes; if it sided with the regimes, Islamic movements worldwide would condemn it for not supporting a part of the Islamic movement. The Syrian Ikhwan were pushed into staging an uprising against the Syrian regime, even though a significant faction, led by Dr Issam al-Ataar, refused to join this US-engineered conspiracy. Inevitably, Hafez al-Asad brutally crushed the uprising, killing thousands in Hama. As planned, this led to years of virulent anti-Iranian propaganda because of Tehran's good relations with Damascus.
The question now, as history threatens to repeat itself, is whether the Ummah has learnt anything from the tragedy of Hama, or whether it will again fall into the traps being laid to advance Uncle Sam's agenda.
SADR's RISING STAR TO ECLIPSE BUSH's SURGE?
http://www.middle-east-online.com/englis.../?id=20406
What must worry Washington more than the massive size of the demonstration on April 9 was its mixed Shiite-Sunni composition and nationalistic ambience. The prospect of Sadr's appeal extending to a section of the Sunni community, with the tacit support of Sistani, is the nightmare scenario that the Bush administration most dreads, says Dilip Hiro.
Nightmare Scenarios for the Bush Administration
Public opinion polls are valuable chips to play for those engaged in a debate of national or international consequence. In the end, however, they are abstract numbers. It is popular demonstrations which give them substance, color, and -- above all -- wide media exposure, and make them truly meaningful. This is particularly true when such marches are peaceful and disciplined in a war-ravaged country like Iraq.
This indeed was the case with the demonstration on April 9 in Najaf. Over a million Iraqis, holding aloft thousands of national flags, marched, chanting, "Yes, yes, Iraq/No, no, America" and "No, no, American/Leave, leave occupier."
The demonstrators arrived from all over the country in response to a call by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, to demand an end to foreign occupation on the fourth anniversary of the end of Baathist rule in Baghdad.
Both the size of the demonstration and its composition were unprecedented. "There are people here from all different parties and sects," Hadhim al-Araji, Sadr's representative in Baghdad's Kadhimiya district, told reporters. "We are all carrying the national flag, a symbol of unity. And we are all united in calling for the withdrawal of the Americans."
The presence of many senior Sunni clerics at the head of the march, which started from Sadr's mosque in Kufa, a nearby town, and the absence of any sectarian flags or images in the parade, underlined the ecumenical nature of the protest.
Crucially, the mammoth demonstration reflected the view prevalent among Iraqi lawmakers. Last autumn, 170 of them in a 275-member Parliament, signed a motion, demanding to know the date of a future American withdrawal. The discomfited government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki played a procedural trick by referring the subject to a parliamentary committee, thereby buying time.
Opinion polls conducted since then show three-quarters of Iraqi respondents demanding the withdrawal of the Anglo-American troops within six to twelve months.
What Makes Sadr Tick?
Though in his early thirties and only a hojatalislam ("proof of Islam") -- one rank below an ayatollah in the Shiite religious hierarchy -- Muqtada al-Sadr has pursued a political strategy no other Iraqi politician can match.
The sources of his ever-expanding appeal are: his pedigree, his fierce nationalism, his shrewd sense of when to confront the occupying power and when to lie low, and his adherence to the hierarchical order of the Shiite sect, topped by a grand ayatollah -- at present 73-year-old Ali Sistani -- whose opinion or decree must be accepted by all those below him. (For his part, Sistani does not criticize any Shiite leader.)
Muqtada's father, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and two elder brothers were assassinated outside a mosque in Najaf in February 1999 by the henchmen of President Saddam Hussein. The Grand Ayatollah had defied Saddam by issuing a religious decree calling on Shiites to attend Friday prayers in mosques. The Iraqi dictator, paranoid about large Shiite gatherings, feared these would suddenly turn violently anti-regime.
Muqtada then went underground -- just as he did recently in the face of the Bush administration's "surge" plan -- resurfacing only after the Baathist regime fell in April 2003; and Saddam City, the vast slum of Baghdad, with nearly 2 million Shiite residents, was renamed Sadr City. As the surviving son of the martyred family of a grand ayatollah, Muqtada was lauded by most Shiites.
While welcoming the demise of the Baathist regime, Sadr consistently opposed the continuing occupation of his country by Anglo-American forces. When Paul Bremer, the American viceroy in Iraq, banned his magazine Al Hawza al Natiqa ("The Vocal Seminary") in April 2004 and American soldiers fired on his followers protesting peacefully against the publication's closure, Sadr called for "armed resistance" to the occupiers.
Uprisings spread from Sadr City to the southern Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala as well as four other cities to the south. More than 540 civilians died in the resulting battles and skirmishes. Since the American forces were then also battling Sunni insurgents in Falluja, Bremer let the ban on the magazine lapse and dropped his plan to arrest Sadr.
Later, Sadr fell in line with the wishes of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to see all Shiite religious groups gather under one umbrella to contest the upcoming parliamentary election. His faction allied with two other Shiite religious parties -- the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Al Daawa al Islamiya (the Islamic Call) -- to form the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
By so doing, in the face of American hostility, Sadr gave protective political cover to his faction and its armed wing, called the Mahdi Army. (U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington have long viewed Sadr and his militia as the greatest threat to American interests in Iraq.) Of the 38 ministers in Maliki's cabinet, six belong to the Sadrist group.
When the Pentagon mounted its latest security plan for Baghdad on February 13 -- aiming to crush both the Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias -- Sadr considered discretion the better part of valor. He ordered his Mahdi militiamen to get off the streets and hide their weapons. For the moment, they were not to resist American forays into Shiite neighborhoods. He then went incommunicado.
Muqtada's decision to avoid bloodshed won plaudits not only from Iraqi politicians but also, discreetly, from Sistani, who decries violence, and whose commitment to bringing about the end of the foreign occupation of Iraq is as strong as Sadr's -- albeit not as vocal.
In a message to the nation, on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the demise of Saddam's Baathist regime, Sadr coupled his order to the Mahdi fighters to intensify their campaign to expel the Anglo-American troops with a call to the Iraqi security forces to join the struggle to defeat "the arch enemy -- America." He urged them to cease targeting Iraqis and direct their anger at the occupiers.
It was the Mahdi Army -- controlling the shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of Shiite Islam, in the holy city of Najaf -- that battled the American troops to a standstill in August 2004. The impasse lasted a fortnight, during which large parts of Najaf's old city were reduced to rubble, with the government of the U.S.-appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, favorite Iraqi exile of the CIA and the State Department as well as leader of the exiled Iraqi National Accord, failing to defuse it.
By contrast, it took Sistani -- freshly back in Najaf, his home base, from London after eye surgery -- a single session with Sadr over dinner to resolve the crisis. A compromise emerged. The Mahdi army ceded control of the holy shrine not to the Americans or their Iraqi cohorts but to Sistani's representatives, and both Mahdi militiamen and U.S. troops left the city.
The Towering Sistani
Ali Sistani established his nationalist credentials early on. As the invading American forces neared Najaf on March 25, 2003, he issued a religious decree requiring all Muslims to resist the invading "infidel" troops. Once the Anglo-American forces occupied Iraq, he adamantly refused to meet American or British officials or their emissaries, and continues to do so to this day.
In January 2004, when Washington favored appointing a hand-picked body of Iraqis, guided by American experts, to draft the Iraqi constitution along secular, democratic, and capitalist lines, Sistani decided to act. He called on the faithful to demonstrate for an elected Parliament, which would then be charged with drafting the constitution – and he succeeded.
Sistani then issued a religious decree calling on the faithful to participate in the vote to create a representative assembly committed to achieving the exit of foreign troops through peaceful means. The Bush White House, however, exploited Sistani's move as part of its own "democracy promotion" campaign in Iraq, with Iraqi fingers dipped in inedible purple ink becoming its much flaunted "democracy symbol."
When Allawi began dithering about holding the vote for an interim parliament by January 2005, as stipulated by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546, Sistani warned that he would call for popular non-cooperation with the occupying powers if it was not held on time. In the elections that followed, the United Iraqi Alliance -- the brain-child of Sistani -- emerged as the majority group and thus the leading designer of the new constitution. Respecting Sistani's views, the Iraqi constitution stipulated that Sharia (Islamic law) was to be the principal source of Iraqi legislation and that no law would be passed that violated the undisputed tenets of Islam.
In the December 2005 parliamentary general election under the new constitution, the UIA became the largest group, a mere 10 seats short of a majority. Though Ibrahim Jaafari of Al Daawa won the contest for UIA leadership by one vote, he was rejected as prime minister by the Kurdish parties, holding the parliament's swing votes, as well as by Washington and London. A crisis paralyzed the government. Once again, Sistani's intercession defused a crisis. He persuaded Jaafari to step down.
Jaafari's successor, Maliki, is as reverential toward Sistani as other Shiite leaders. For instance, in December 2006, when American officials reportedly urged Maliki to postpone Saddam Hussein's execution until after the religious holiday of Eid Al Adha (the Festival of Sacrifice), Maliki turned to Sistani. The Grand Ayatollah favored an immediate execution. And so it came to pass.
Sistani's next blow fell on the Bush administration earlier this month. He let be known his disapproval of Washington-backed legislation to allow thousands of former Baath Party members to resume their public service positions. That undermined one of the White House's pet projects in Iraq -- an attempt to entice into the political mainstream part of the alienated Sunni minority that is at the heart of the Iraqi insurgency.
In sum, while refraining from participating in everyday politics, Sistani intervenes on the issues of paramount importance to the Iraqi people, as he sees them. Western journalists, who routinely describe him as belonging to the "quietist school" of Shiite Islam (at odds with the "interventionist school"), are therefore off the mark. Given Sistani's uncompromising opposition to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, his staunch nationalism, and the unmatched reverence that he evokes, particularly among the majority Shiites, he poses a greater long-term threat to Washington's interests in Iraq than Muqtada al-Sadr; and, far from belonging to opposite schools of Shiite Islam, Sadr and Sistani, both staunch nationalists, complement each other -- much to the puzzled frustration of the Bush White House.
What must worry Washington more than the massive size of the demonstration on April 9 was its mixed Shiite-Sunni composition and nationalistic ambience. The prospect of Sadr's appeal extending to a section of the Sunni community, with the tacit support of Sistani, is the nightmare scenario that the Bush administration most dreads. Yet it may come to pass.
http://www.muslimedia.com/abudhar205.htm
All over the world, the confrontation between the forces of Islam and kufr is intensifying, with the forces of the Islamic movement taking on the kuffar – represented in the modern world by the zionist-US dominated West – in many very different ways. And all over the world, we are seeing the kuffar hitting back in one very dangerous way: the promotion of sectarianism and internal discord among Muslims.
In Iran, for the first time in contemporary history, the leaders of the Islamic state have taken the initiative to open up the most controversial issue in imperialist-zionist circles: the so-called holocaust. Despite all the Western liberal propaganda about “freedom of speech”, this is a part of the zionist mythology that has never been put on the table and openly debated with open minds and without prejudice. The centrality of the holocaust in the zionist justification for their occupation of Palestine is such that those who want to counter them must address it. However, like anything else that Islamic Iran does to support the Palestinians, this move will no doubt be used by the zionists to spin more accusations against them, and to justify their own plans against the Islamic State. At the same time the Islamic leadership in Lebanon represented by Hizbullah, leading a coalition of other patriotic Lebanese and anti-zionist forces, are slow-roasting the American-sponsored government of the Saudi affiliate Fuad Siniora. In occupied Palestine, the refusal of the beleaguered Hamas movement to compromise has forced the Palestinian president Mahmud ‘Abbas to expose himself as the spearhead of zionist and imperialist provocations. Isma‘il Haniyyah returns from a tour of Muslim countries with tens of millions of dollars for the foodless Palestinian people, and the old guard of Fatah harass him at the border, prevent him from bringing money into Palestine, and then try to assassinate him. Desperate people do desperate things; and the politicians of the PLO are showing themselves willing to inflict any degree of suffering on the Palestinians in order to try to protect the political empire they have built in the Palestinian Authority.
Meanwhile political pressure is being felt in the cities of Washington and Tel Aviv. The US capitalist establishment, seeing its domination threatened by the fall-out of the Iraq fiasco, are telling Bush and his coterie that they must deal with Tehran and Damascus to get things sorted. Some are even talking about reaching a “grand bargain” after detailed negotiations on a broad range of issues. In other diplomatic and political quarters, the sirens are sounding the alarm about the ascendancy of Tehran in the whole Middle East. As the smoke begins to clear, it appears to some observers that the US is on the run across the Middle East: Iraq is more than a disaster; Lebanon is less than a success; Afghanistan is slipping away; and Saudi Arabia is in the twilight zone. The American imperium is dangerously close to failing; and yet, like a cornered animal, the Bush administration is as dangerous and aggressive as ever.
Knowing that direct military confrontation has got them nowhere in the Islamic world – a lesson they should have learnt years ago, from Saddam Hussein's total failure to defeat Islamic Iran in the 1980s – the Anglo-American-Israeli axis of evil is now reverting to a last-ditch strategy: exploiting the sectarian fault-lines within the Ummah in order to weaken the enemy that they face. The Sunni/Shi‘i schism is the last diplomatic bombshell in their political arsenal, and Iraq – poor suffering, burning Iraq – is where this bombshell has been detonated, to spread its poisonous fall-out across the Middle East. All talk of a democratic Iraq is finished now; now the US's closest ally in the Muslim world, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, wants to come to the rescue of its Sunni brothers in Iraq. Forget about its Sunni brothers in Palestine; their decades of struggle and suffering against zionists merit no Saudi assistance. But the Sunni Muslims of Iraq are must be encouraged and assisted to fight against the Shi'i Muslims alongside whom they have lived peaceably for years. But it is not the love of Sunni Muslims that motivates the politics and the policies of the Saudi ruling family; it is rather the instructions and guidelines that come to them from Washington – and if things continue to develop as they have been in recent years, the orders will soon be arriving in Riyadh directly from Tel Aviv, instead of taking the indirect route through Washington.
So what is the new political development in Iraq that will save the administration in Washington, or at least help it create a more favorable political climate before the presidential elections in less than two years time? The answer is as simple as it is bloody: sectarian warfare leading to the break-up of Iraq. For the US, violence that can be blamed on sectarianism has the advantage of being somebody else's fault, while the “inevitable” break-up of the country and the establishment of pro-Western rulers in at least parts of it can be presented as a success of sorts. So the Saudi government, which has placed tight restrictions on fund-raising and contributions to Islamic charities and brotherhoods around the world, is now funding Sunni groups in Iraq. For this deadly game to work, the Iranians will have to finance and support Shi‘i sectarians in Iraq. This, of course, is not something that the US and Israel can order, as they can give orders to Riyadh; however, they confidently expect, and are probably not wrong, that Tehran will play along as a matter of national interest or “Shi‘i solidarity.”
There are two words coming into vogue in this new zionist-imperialist scheme; they are Wahhabi and Safawi, used by Shi'is and Sunnis respectively to label and condemn their opponents. If things continue to slide down this dangerous sectarian slope, two stronger words will become more common; they are already being heard in places. These are nawasib and rawafid respectively. These two words were the “nigger” words for Sunnis and Shi‘is way back in the early centuries of Islam, when sectarianism reached a fanatical climax. Recently around 40 ulama’ in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia signed an edict that virtually declares open hostilities against Shi‘is. The timing could not be more crucial as it comes just weeks before the annual hajj in Makkah. We can only pray that the fanatics will not ignite their sectarian fuel in the Holy Lands at these Holy Times. However, whatever happens or does not happen during this hajj season should not prevent us from viewing the larger picture, in which officials and politicians in Egypt, Jordan, and Arabia are seeing a “Shi‘i arc” extending from Central Asia to the Mediterranean. They fear that, at the minimum, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon will become one political bloc. This governmental mindset has to take a sectarian course of action; therefore, protecting the Sunnis, according to this twisted and maligned logic, begins with fighting the Shi‘is in Iraq. The fear hiding behind this fear is the zionist fear of an Islamic bloc of people (140 million) on its northern border.
If the sectarian bomb explodes in Iraq, the fall-out could contaminate Muslims around the world. Let us not be drawn into this massive political and “religious” trap. Let us, both Sunnis and Shi‘is, confess that we all have our own types of fanatics, and let us take the lead in opposing the fanatics on our own side, instead of contributing to the polarization by pointing the finger only at fanatics on the other side. If the Islamic State in Iran cannot do that with the Shi‘i component of the Ummah, and the wider Islamic movement cannot do that with the Sunni component of the Ummah, we will almost inevitably find ourselves moving down a path of self-destruction. In recent times our relative solidarity has caused our enemies to split, divide and shatter. Now is the worst possible time to listen to sectarians, schismatics and stooges who are working to promote the zionist-imperialist agenda.
POISON OF SECTARIANISM SPREADING THROUGH THE UMMAH FROM IRAQ
http://www.muslimedia.com/editor205a.htm
Painful though it is to admit it (it would be so much easier to focus on the successful resistance to the US occupation), it is undeniable that the communal strife in Iraq is resulting in a frightening increase in sectarian tensions throughout the Muslim world. US policies after the invasion institutionalised Iraq’s communal divide, but until the bombing of the Askariyya shrine in Samarra on February 22 it was possible to regard the sectarianism as a unfortunate side-issue that could be resolved by inter-communal dialogue, confidence-building measures and a process of reconciliation between the various political and communal groups. But the Askariyya bombing unleashed an orgy of blood-letting that appears to have obliterated every trace of the restraint, sanity, ethics and even human reason and decency that are required to keep the animal instincts of mankind in check.
The tactics employed in the butchery in Iraq are becoming increasingly brutal. The scenes are all too familiar. Everyday scores of Iraqis are being kidnapped and killed, and their mutilated bodies dumped in the streets, rivers and open fields. There have been reports of patients being abducted from hospitals and killed. Suicide-bombings and military-style attacks have been launched against unarmed civilian gatherings, neighbourhoods, mosques and other houses of worship. Iraqi security forces are at best standing idly by while such heinous acts are being committed, and at worst colluding with them or even taking part in them. Ethnic cleansing (or sectarian cleansing to be more accurate) has turned previously-mixed neighbourhoods, villages, towns and even parts of some provinces into uniformly Sunni or Shi‘i areas.
The tragedy unfolding in Iraq has been accompanied by a corresponding rise in the tempo of sectarian discourse. Derogatory terminology culled from crude, outdated, chauvinistic and narrow-minded sectarian polemics, which feed on a simplistic, prejudiced and distorted reading of Islamic history, are gaining more currency. More and more Sunni Arabs in Iraq have taken to calling Shi‘as “rawafid”(rejectionists), “Safavids” and “Buyids” (Buwayhids). Shi‘as in turn have taken to calling Sunnis “nawasib” (enemies of the Ahl al-Bayt), “Umayyads” and “Wahhabis”. It is a measure of the levels that the sectarian discourse has reached that Adnan al-Dulaymi, the leader of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in Iraq's parliament, used almost unimaginable language at the Conference for the Support of the Iraqi People in Istanbul on December 13-14. “It is a sectarian war. It is a sectarian conflict that aims to destroy the Sunnis,” an enraged Dulaymi shouted from the pulpit. “Anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong and must reconsider his position,” he added before declaring : “Yes, we are sectarian!”
Such language is matched by implicitly sectarian attitudes masquerading as concerns for law and order among Shi‘i leaders who are in government. During a recent visit to Washington, Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who heads the largest Shi‘a bloc in the Iraqi parliament, called on the US-led coalition forces to employ more lethal force against Sunni insurgents. Speaking at the US Institute for Peace, after talks with president George W Bush, he said: “The strikes [the insurgents] are getting from the multinational forces are not hard enough to put an end to their acts... Eliminating the danger of the civil war in Iraq can only be achieved through directing decisive strikes against the takfiri [those who excommunicate other Muslims, declaring them kafirs] terrorists and Ba'athist terrorists in Iraq.”
Both sides, of course, blame the other for starting this process. For the Shi‘i’s, the fault lies with the anti-Shi‘i sectarianism of al-Qa‘ida and associated militants who have come to Iraq to join the resistance; Sunnis blame the Shi‘is for preferring to joining the US’s power structure, rather than making a common cause against the invaders. Both explanations have an element of truth. But it is also true that many on both sides were predisposed to communal and sectarian understandings of the situation, and quick to act on such grounds rather than seeking out other bases for understanding and action. This must be counted as a massive failure on the part of Islamic leaders of both communities, particularly after their promising cooperation early in the occupation.
Even more disturbing is the fact that echoes of this exclusivist and sectarian discourse are now appearing and getting louder in other parts of the Muslim world. These echoes are partly rooted in the same popular tendency towards sectarian attitudes that we saw in Iraq; but are also being encouraged by Arab regimes concerned about the increasing influence of Islamic Iran. The strong passions that sectarian prejudices arouse provide rulers in many parts of the Muslim world with a useful means of distracting their people from more dangerous (to the rulers) political issues. Thus we see sectarian ideas being deployed by secular regimes and politicians (whose commitment to any aspect of the deen is at best tenuous) to serve selfish political interests. As long ago as December 2004, King Abdallah II of Jordan told an American journalist that “If it was a Shi'a-led Iraq that had a special relationship with Syria and Hizbollah and Lebanon, then we have this new crescent that appears that will be very destabilizing for the Gulf countries and for the whole region.”
Sectarian prejudices foster unnecessary “us”-versus-”them” divisions and barriers that undermine the Islamic concept of a unified community of believers that transcends all other identities – the Ummah. As such, it nurtures indifference, callousness and selective compassion towards the suffering of fellow Muslims. An example is the verbal brawl that erupted in the Bahraini parliament in November 2004 over a proposed motion to condemn the US-led assault against Fallujah. The appalling destruction of Fallujah should have been unreservedly condemned by all Muslims; instead, the motion proposed by Sunni MPs was opposed by their Shi‘a colleagues, arguing that it amounted to supporting “terrorists” in Iraq. In the end, a compromise was reached: a hollow statement censuring the death of civilians. Last month, Sunni and Shi‘i Islamic groups both did well in Bahrain’s parliamentary elections. Working together, they could achieve a great deal. But there are already signs that sectarian differences will prevent this.
The demons of sectarianism, conveying a message of hate, inciting Muslim-on-Muslim violence, fostering internecine conflict and obstructing inter-communal harmony, are perhaps the greatest internal threat facing the Ummah and the Islamic movement today. Muslims need to break this vicious cycle of sectarian mudslinging; only a zero-tolerance approach is acceptable. Any failure in this regard will simply fuel the fire of sectarian bigotry, encouraging violence between Muslims, and playing into the hands of those who wish to see us divided, weak and subservient to the powers of modern kufr. Iraq may be all but lost; the rest of the Ummah must not be allowed to follow the same tragic path.
MUSLIM SECTARIANISM A PART OF THE US AGENDA
February 2007 / REFLECTIONS by Zafar Bangash
http://www.muslimedia.com/reflect0207.htm
It is difficult to say which is worse: nationalism or sectarianism in the Ummah. The ruling elites in the Muslim world exploit both these weaknesses to advance their own nefarious agendas. Just as nationalism is alien to the political culture of Islam, so sectarianism is the very antithesis of Muslim unity. While most Muslims have little reason to indulge in divisive polemic against fellow Muslims, there are groups within the Ummah whose survival depends on keeping us divided.
Let us consider two recent developments: Hizbullah's successful resistance to zionist aggression in Lebanon last summer and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's standing up to the US. The first elevated Hizbullah leader Shaikh Seyyed Hasan Nasrallah's stature among the Muslim masses, while the second turned Ahmedinejad into a symbol of the courage and defiance so lacking in other Muslim rulers. The popularity of both shot up among Muslims all over the world. Their photographs were prominently displayed in people's homes and in restaurants and coffee shops throughout the Middle East. It did not matter that both are Shi‘a; people instinctively identified with them because their stature and conduct stood in sharp contrast with the spineless cowardice habitually displayed by their own rulers.
These developments clearly alarmed other Muslim rulers and the US, who are struggling to neutralize them. When the two Abdullahs, Saudi and Jordanian, condemned Hizbullah, the Muslim masses reacted angrily and both men had to back down. Their retreat, however, was tactical; aware that the elation at Hizbullah's victory and Ahmedinejad's courage would dissipate in the face of new problems, real or imagined, they waited for an opportune moment to strike back. They did not have to wait long. The US, too, the main loser in these developments, needed to recover lost ground.
In October, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a highly publicized trip to the Middle East to rally “moderate regimes” against the “extremists”, meaning Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas and Syria. In December, members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) met in Bahrain to offer their own pearls of wisdom about confronting extremists. Rice was in the region again in mid-January to mobilize the Arab dinosaurs for a confrontation with the forces of Islam. By this time, events in Iraq, grossly mishandled by the incompetent Iraqi government, were effectively supporting the US effort. “The reality of the current situation is that we are approaching an open Sunni-Shi'ite conflict in the region,” Emad Gad, a specialist in international relations at the government-financed Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, told the New York Times on January 17. “And Egypt will also be a part of it as a part of the Sunni axis. No one will be able to avoid or escape it.” Egypt is not alone in stoking sectarianism; the Saudis are even worse. They fear the growing power of Iran as a threat to their illegitimate rule. Abdul Rahman al-Barak, a Saudi ‘alim close to the ruling family, has described the Shi‘a, whom he referred to by the derogatory term ar-rafideen (the rejectionists), as worse than Jews and Christians.
Members of the GCC also jumped on Rice's anti-Iran bandwagon when their foreign ministers met in Kuwait on January 16. The communiqué they issued must have sounded like music to American ears: “The participants welcomed the commitment by the United States as stated in President Bush's recent speech [January 10] to defend the security of the Gulf, the territorial integrity of Iraq and to ensure a successful, fair and inclusive political process that engages all Iraqi communities and guarantees the stability of the country.” Their concern about inclusiveness would be more convincing had Iraq under Saddam been a model for inclusiveness or if the regimes themselves were so inclined. Their concern is more mundane: to join America's anti-Iran crusade because they fear Iran's growing influence. To undermine Iran, they are willing to resort to crude tactics: fan sectarian tensions by financing it on behalf of the US.
All this is, unfortunately, nothing new; some parts of the Ummah have a long history of falling into the sectarian trap. Soon after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger convened a secret meeting in Cairo to instigate Shi‘a-Sunni conflict by staging an uprising against the regime in either Sudan or Syria. The plan was to embarrass Iran. If Tehran supported the uprising, it would disrupt its relations with these regimes; if it sided with the regimes, Islamic movements worldwide would condemn it for not supporting a part of the Islamic movement. The Syrian Ikhwan were pushed into staging an uprising against the Syrian regime, even though a significant faction, led by Dr Issam al-Ataar, refused to join this US-engineered conspiracy. Inevitably, Hafez al-Asad brutally crushed the uprising, killing thousands in Hama. As planned, this led to years of virulent anti-Iranian propaganda because of Tehran's good relations with Damascus.
The question now, as history threatens to repeat itself, is whether the Ummah has learnt anything from the tragedy of Hama, or whether it will again fall into the traps being laid to advance Uncle Sam's agenda.
SADR's RISING STAR TO ECLIPSE BUSH's SURGE?
http://www.middle-east-online.com/englis.../?id=20406
What must worry Washington more than the massive size of the demonstration on April 9 was its mixed Shiite-Sunni composition and nationalistic ambience. The prospect of Sadr's appeal extending to a section of the Sunni community, with the tacit support of Sistani, is the nightmare scenario that the Bush administration most dreads, says Dilip Hiro.
Nightmare Scenarios for the Bush Administration
Public opinion polls are valuable chips to play for those engaged in a debate of national or international consequence. In the end, however, they are abstract numbers. It is popular demonstrations which give them substance, color, and -- above all -- wide media exposure, and make them truly meaningful. This is particularly true when such marches are peaceful and disciplined in a war-ravaged country like Iraq.
This indeed was the case with the demonstration on April 9 in Najaf. Over a million Iraqis, holding aloft thousands of national flags, marched, chanting, "Yes, yes, Iraq/No, no, America" and "No, no, American/Leave, leave occupier."
The demonstrators arrived from all over the country in response to a call by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, to demand an end to foreign occupation on the fourth anniversary of the end of Baathist rule in Baghdad.
Both the size of the demonstration and its composition were unprecedented. "There are people here from all different parties and sects," Hadhim al-Araji, Sadr's representative in Baghdad's Kadhimiya district, told reporters. "We are all carrying the national flag, a symbol of unity. And we are all united in calling for the withdrawal of the Americans."
The presence of many senior Sunni clerics at the head of the march, which started from Sadr's mosque in Kufa, a nearby town, and the absence of any sectarian flags or images in the parade, underlined the ecumenical nature of the protest.
Crucially, the mammoth demonstration reflected the view prevalent among Iraqi lawmakers. Last autumn, 170 of them in a 275-member Parliament, signed a motion, demanding to know the date of a future American withdrawal. The discomfited government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki played a procedural trick by referring the subject to a parliamentary committee, thereby buying time.
Opinion polls conducted since then show three-quarters of Iraqi respondents demanding the withdrawal of the Anglo-American troops within six to twelve months.
What Makes Sadr Tick?
Though in his early thirties and only a hojatalislam ("proof of Islam") -- one rank below an ayatollah in the Shiite religious hierarchy -- Muqtada al-Sadr has pursued a political strategy no other Iraqi politician can match.
The sources of his ever-expanding appeal are: his pedigree, his fierce nationalism, his shrewd sense of when to confront the occupying power and when to lie low, and his adherence to the hierarchical order of the Shiite sect, topped by a grand ayatollah -- at present 73-year-old Ali Sistani -- whose opinion or decree must be accepted by all those below him. (For his part, Sistani does not criticize any Shiite leader.)
Muqtada's father, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and two elder brothers were assassinated outside a mosque in Najaf in February 1999 by the henchmen of President Saddam Hussein. The Grand Ayatollah had defied Saddam by issuing a religious decree calling on Shiites to attend Friday prayers in mosques. The Iraqi dictator, paranoid about large Shiite gatherings, feared these would suddenly turn violently anti-regime.
Muqtada then went underground -- just as he did recently in the face of the Bush administration's "surge" plan -- resurfacing only after the Baathist regime fell in April 2003; and Saddam City, the vast slum of Baghdad, with nearly 2 million Shiite residents, was renamed Sadr City. As the surviving son of the martyred family of a grand ayatollah, Muqtada was lauded by most Shiites.
While welcoming the demise of the Baathist regime, Sadr consistently opposed the continuing occupation of his country by Anglo-American forces. When Paul Bremer, the American viceroy in Iraq, banned his magazine Al Hawza al Natiqa ("The Vocal Seminary") in April 2004 and American soldiers fired on his followers protesting peacefully against the publication's closure, Sadr called for "armed resistance" to the occupiers.
Uprisings spread from Sadr City to the southern Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala as well as four other cities to the south. More than 540 civilians died in the resulting battles and skirmishes. Since the American forces were then also battling Sunni insurgents in Falluja, Bremer let the ban on the magazine lapse and dropped his plan to arrest Sadr.
Later, Sadr fell in line with the wishes of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to see all Shiite religious groups gather under one umbrella to contest the upcoming parliamentary election. His faction allied with two other Shiite religious parties -- the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Al Daawa al Islamiya (the Islamic Call) -- to form the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
By so doing, in the face of American hostility, Sadr gave protective political cover to his faction and its armed wing, called the Mahdi Army. (U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington have long viewed Sadr and his militia as the greatest threat to American interests in Iraq.) Of the 38 ministers in Maliki's cabinet, six belong to the Sadrist group.
When the Pentagon mounted its latest security plan for Baghdad on February 13 -- aiming to crush both the Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias -- Sadr considered discretion the better part of valor. He ordered his Mahdi militiamen to get off the streets and hide their weapons. For the moment, they were not to resist American forays into Shiite neighborhoods. He then went incommunicado.
Muqtada's decision to avoid bloodshed won plaudits not only from Iraqi politicians but also, discreetly, from Sistani, who decries violence, and whose commitment to bringing about the end of the foreign occupation of Iraq is as strong as Sadr's -- albeit not as vocal.
In a message to the nation, on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the demise of Saddam's Baathist regime, Sadr coupled his order to the Mahdi fighters to intensify their campaign to expel the Anglo-American troops with a call to the Iraqi security forces to join the struggle to defeat "the arch enemy -- America." He urged them to cease targeting Iraqis and direct their anger at the occupiers.
It was the Mahdi Army -- controlling the shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of Shiite Islam, in the holy city of Najaf -- that battled the American troops to a standstill in August 2004. The impasse lasted a fortnight, during which large parts of Najaf's old city were reduced to rubble, with the government of the U.S.-appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, favorite Iraqi exile of the CIA and the State Department as well as leader of the exiled Iraqi National Accord, failing to defuse it.
By contrast, it took Sistani -- freshly back in Najaf, his home base, from London after eye surgery -- a single session with Sadr over dinner to resolve the crisis. A compromise emerged. The Mahdi army ceded control of the holy shrine not to the Americans or their Iraqi cohorts but to Sistani's representatives, and both Mahdi militiamen and U.S. troops left the city.
The Towering Sistani
Ali Sistani established his nationalist credentials early on. As the invading American forces neared Najaf on March 25, 2003, he issued a religious decree requiring all Muslims to resist the invading "infidel" troops. Once the Anglo-American forces occupied Iraq, he adamantly refused to meet American or British officials or their emissaries, and continues to do so to this day.
In January 2004, when Washington favored appointing a hand-picked body of Iraqis, guided by American experts, to draft the Iraqi constitution along secular, democratic, and capitalist lines, Sistani decided to act. He called on the faithful to demonstrate for an elected Parliament, which would then be charged with drafting the constitution – and he succeeded.
Sistani then issued a religious decree calling on the faithful to participate in the vote to create a representative assembly committed to achieving the exit of foreign troops through peaceful means. The Bush White House, however, exploited Sistani's move as part of its own "democracy promotion" campaign in Iraq, with Iraqi fingers dipped in inedible purple ink becoming its much flaunted "democracy symbol."
When Allawi began dithering about holding the vote for an interim parliament by January 2005, as stipulated by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546, Sistani warned that he would call for popular non-cooperation with the occupying powers if it was not held on time. In the elections that followed, the United Iraqi Alliance -- the brain-child of Sistani -- emerged as the majority group and thus the leading designer of the new constitution. Respecting Sistani's views, the Iraqi constitution stipulated that Sharia (Islamic law) was to be the principal source of Iraqi legislation and that no law would be passed that violated the undisputed tenets of Islam.
In the December 2005 parliamentary general election under the new constitution, the UIA became the largest group, a mere 10 seats short of a majority. Though Ibrahim Jaafari of Al Daawa won the contest for UIA leadership by one vote, he was rejected as prime minister by the Kurdish parties, holding the parliament's swing votes, as well as by Washington and London. A crisis paralyzed the government. Once again, Sistani's intercession defused a crisis. He persuaded Jaafari to step down.
Jaafari's successor, Maliki, is as reverential toward Sistani as other Shiite leaders. For instance, in December 2006, when American officials reportedly urged Maliki to postpone Saddam Hussein's execution until after the religious holiday of Eid Al Adha (the Festival of Sacrifice), Maliki turned to Sistani. The Grand Ayatollah favored an immediate execution. And so it came to pass.
Sistani's next blow fell on the Bush administration earlier this month. He let be known his disapproval of Washington-backed legislation to allow thousands of former Baath Party members to resume their public service positions. That undermined one of the White House's pet projects in Iraq -- an attempt to entice into the political mainstream part of the alienated Sunni minority that is at the heart of the Iraqi insurgency.
In sum, while refraining from participating in everyday politics, Sistani intervenes on the issues of paramount importance to the Iraqi people, as he sees them. Western journalists, who routinely describe him as belonging to the "quietist school" of Shiite Islam (at odds with the "interventionist school"), are therefore off the mark. Given Sistani's uncompromising opposition to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, his staunch nationalism, and the unmatched reverence that he evokes, particularly among the majority Shiites, he poses a greater long-term threat to Washington's interests in Iraq than Muqtada al-Sadr; and, far from belonging to opposite schools of Shiite Islam, Sadr and Sistani, both staunch nationalists, complement each other -- much to the puzzled frustration of the Bush White House.
What must worry Washington more than the massive size of the demonstration on April 9 was its mixed Shiite-Sunni composition and nationalistic ambience. The prospect of Sadr's appeal extending to a section of the Sunni community, with the tacit support of Sistani, is the nightmare scenario that the Bush administration most dreads. Yet it may come to pass.