Cleric Steps Up Anti-Occupation Rhetoric
Shiite Leader Urges Large Gathering to Drive U.S. Forces From Holy City
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 26, 2003; Page A13
BAGHDAD, July 25 -- A militant Shiite Muslim cleric escalated his campaign against the U.S. occupation today, urging tens of thousands of followers to expel American soldiers from the holy city of Najaf and demanding the dissolution of Iraq's Governing Council, a U.S.-appointed panel whose creation left him without a say in the formulation of a new government.
The remarks by Moqtada Sadr, a 30-year-old activist who lacks the authority of senior clerics but commands a presence in the streets of Baghdad and other cities, marked the second time in eight days that he has delivered a challenge to U.S. authorities.
Sadr again stopped short of issuing a call to arms or urging holy war against U.S. troops, demands that would almost certainly incite violence. But he repeated his appeal to form an Islamic army to resist "submission, humiliation or occupation" and said thousands had already volunteered to become part of the force, whose mission would be to expel the Americans and defend Iraqi cities.
"To those who say we can't expel the occupation forces from Najaf, I say we can," he told followers at the sprawling, mud-walled Kufa Mosque in a sermon televised on Arab satellite networks. "We must end American hegemony over our sacred place."
So far, U.S. officials have chosen to largely ignore Sadr, dismissing his influence and expressing confidence that he speaks for only a disenchanted coterie among Iraq's Shiite majority. But his remarks, increasingly confrontational and delivered to crowds that number in the tens of thousands every Friday, present a potential dilemma for U.S. authorities. By ignoring him, they risk allowing his campaign to gather momentum; by acting against him, they augment his stature as a victim of U.S. repression.
Sadr's newly militant tone may signal an attempt to mine the vein of discontent over the slow pace of reconstruction and capitalize on prospective setbacks the Governing Council faces in bringing an Iraqi face to the occupation. Introduced July 13, the council has power to name officials and change some laws, but ultimate authority remains in the hands of the U.S. civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer. Of its 25 members, 13 are Shiites, but only two are religious figures and most are former exiles.
The son of a prominent Iraqi ayatollah believed to have been assassinated by Saddam Hussein's government in 1999, Sadr and his mostly young, activist clerical followers mobilized quickly after U.S. forces overthrew Hussein on April 9, surprising many in Iraq. In the sprawling Baghdad slum renamed Sadr City after his father, Sadr's followers set up the kind of social-services network used to great effect by Islamic activists elsewhere. In the capital and southern Iraq, they appointed prayer leaders in mosques and recruited a following that stands as one of the few mass movements to have arisen since Hussein's fall.
But since then, Sadr has faced the ire of far more senior clerics over what they see as his attempt to usurp their leadership role, traditionally conferred by age and decades of religious scholarship. Other more political Shiite religious groups, such as the formerly exiled Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, view Sadr's popular following as a threat to their ability to speak on behalf of Iraq's Shiites, who make up at least 60 percent of the population.
In contrast to the Supreme Council's engagement with U.S. authorities -- Hakim's group is taking part in the U.S.-appointed Governing Council -- Sadr has tried to rely on street politics to bolster his presence in postwar Iraq, a tactic he employed again today.
"This mass gathering today proves that the biggest trend is support for the seminary, not support for the Iraqi Governing Council," said Sadr, who like his followers at the podium wore a white funeral shroud, the same attire adopted by his father before his death. "This Iraqi Governing Council was set up by the Americans, and it must be disbanded."
Since the war's end, Sadr has delivered the sermon most Fridays at the Kufa Mosque. His father, Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, began a tradition of delivering the weekly devotional there -- a staple of Sunni Muslim worship, but frowned upon by more traditional Shiite clerics. The mosque is just outside Najaf, which is 80 miles south of Baghdad.
A place of pilgrimage, Najaf is one of Iraq's two holiest Shiite cities and the burial place of Imam Ali, the venerated son-in-law and cousin of the prophet Muhammad and considered by Shiites to be his rightful heir.
Last week, a visit to Najaf by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz nearly turned into a confrontation, when Sadr's followers became convinced that U.S. military forces escorting Wolfowitz had arrived to arrest Sadr.
Officials with the U.S.-led occupation have said that Sadr's group has bused in followers to Kufa to augment their numbers at the mosque, and today, the Friday prayers in Sadr City were called off so that supporters could travel to Kufa. The officials have contended that Sadr's movement lacks stature in Najaf and cite complaints from residents that his followers are smuggling in weapons.
In his sermon, read in a forceful voice from notes on a lectern, Sadr accused U.S. forces of endangering Iraq's future and spreading what he called "decadent Western ideas and prostitution."
"I say the party that doesn't want to see a stable Iraq is America, because instability will prolong the U.S. occupation," he said. "What kind of stability do they have in mind? Stability through force or through those they have appointed? This is not stability."
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