Will the Iraqi women of Saddam's secular government find any comfort from the man who Bush will have caused to replace Saddam? Think about it!
And how ironic is it that Sistani will assume power in Iraq, and he doesn't even communicate verbally with a single US official?
>>>Sistani has refused to meet U.S. officials, forcing them to rely on Iraqi interlocutors perceived by the Americans as having their own agendas and interests. In recent months, he has exchanged letters with the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer.<<<
miami.com
Posted on Sun, Feb. 08, 2004 story:PUB_DESC
CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Reclusive cleric shaping nation's future
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has generally avoided mixing religion and politics. But the need to fend off secularism is driving his call for direct elections in Iraq.
BY ANTHONY SHADID
Washington Post Service
NAJAF, Iraq - Rarely seen in public, and in isolation for the past six years, Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini Sistani, 73, has derailed one U.S. plan for Iraq's political transition and is now striving to undo another through a demand for direct elections.
Sistani has caused anxiety among U.S. officials, who want to pull out of Iraq by June 30 and fear that the mechanism for early elections is not in place. They are also wary of the theocracy in neighboring Iran, envisioning Iraq as a secular, democratic outpost in the Arab world. But Sistani's statements -- often handwritten, seldom spoken -- have already secured the Shiite clergy a crucial if not dominant role in determining Iraq's future.
His importance as a pivotal figure in the country's transition from U.S. occupation to Iraqi rule was highlighted Thursday when he was widely reported to have been the target of an assassination attempt. Unknown gunment wielding AK-47s were said to have attacked him -- although subsequently, representatives from Shiite religious parties and Sistani'e own aides denied an incident had even occurred.
A deeply traditional cleric, Sistani has been steeped in the culture of religious schools since he was 10 years old, educated by some of their most illustrious scholars and dedicated to the preservation of the schools' authority. He cultivated such an austere image that he did not buy a refrigerator until a decade ago. Yet he oversees institutions and a budget in the tens of millions of dollars.
While his detractors see his newfound activism as cause for alarm -- the onset of clerical influence and the ascent of the Shiite majority in a divided country -- his followers describe his moves as defensive. Sistani fears the loss of what he describes as Iraq's Islamic identity, and he trusts that Iraqis, a Muslim, Arab people, won't disavow it if given a voice through elections. He chafes at the secular nature of modern Turkey.
Sistani has explicitly refrained from pronouncements on what shape Iraq's constitution and law should take. He is described as a flexible thinker who believes that religion should adapt to time and place. Yet his edicts reveal a profoundly traditionalist view of society. In declarations on the most minute elements of personal behavior, he has said that men and women should not mix social- ly, that music for entertainment is prohibited and that women should veil their hair.
Through no choice of his own, his interlocutors say, Sistani has now been forced to define his legacy.
''Any grand ayatollah would have done exactly the same,'' said Mowaffak Rubaie, a member of the Governing Council who visits Sistani often. ``He keeps on saying that in 50 years from now, if I don't act, people will remember me by saying why didn't he do this, why didn't he say anything? They will say the country lost its identity, and you did nothing to stop it.''
Sistani was born in Mashhad, a city in northwest Iran that is home to the country's most sacred Shiite shrine. He was named after his paternal grandfather, a renowned scholar who studied in Najaf's 1,000-year-old seminary. At the time, Iraq's shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala were as Persian as they were Arab. The family's ancestral home was the province of Sistan, in southwest Iran, where for centuries the men in the family served as religious leaders.
STUDENT PRODIGY
According to his official biography, Sistani began learning the Koran at age 5, then entered studies of Islamic law and philosophy at age 10 in Mashhad. By age 19, he was on his way to Qom, a seat of scholarship in western Iran. Less than three years later, at 21, he traveled to Najaf, where he lived for the next half-century.
He raised his family in Najaf. His wife is Iranian, but his two sons speak Arabic like native Iraqis. The older son, Mohammed Rida, serves as his confidant. His other son, Mohammed Jawad, also belongs to the clergy but plays little role in his father's office, choosing instead what residents describe as a quiet life of study.
Sistani's early years in Najaf were a time of momentous shifts in Shiite politics and religion. Najaf, for centuries the preeminent center of Shiite scholarship, was losing influence to Qom, and after a revolt against the British in 1920, a succession of Iraqi regimes -- monarchs, generals and strongmen -- were determined to break the clergy's power. While the clergy did not reach its nadir until Saddam Hussein's rule, it was already in decline when Sistani arrived. That loss of prestige, and a desire to reclaim its influence, created a powerful current in Najaf today.
By all accounts, Sistani was a brilliant student. He studied under the leading ayatollah in Qom, then became a disciple of Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qassim Khoei in Najaf. Khoei granted Sistani, at age 31, the right to judge religious questions -- only one of two students given that standing. By the 1980s, he was grooming Sistani as his successor.
Like his mentor, Sistani showed no signs of political activism in his years in the seminary. But in the often concealed contests for influence, Sistani was an assertive figure and rose quickly through the ranks.
In 1992, when Khoei died at the age of 93, throwing religious leadership in Iraq into turmoil, Sistani was asked to lead the funeral prayers, a highly symbolic gesture of Khoei's intentions.
Within a year, after the death of two elderly rivals, Sistani had emerged as the marja in Najaf among the traditional clergy. That position was contested by outsiders, including an Iraqi-born cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr. But Sistani inherited Khoei's endowment and, among the powerful families in Najaf -- many of Iranian origin with ties to commerce and the clergy -- he was the acknowledged, best-financed leader. After the government assassinated Sadr and two of his sons in 1999, Sistani was left as a largely undisputed first among equals, with Najaf's three other grand ayatollahs deferring to him.
PRAYERS START HIS DAY
Sistani's day begins with the evening prayers, at about 5 p.m. He follows that by meeting special guests, a simple dinner of cheese, olives and bread, then spends the night in prayer and study, said Essam Kamil, who worked in Sistani's office for three years in the 1990s. After dawn prayers, he sleeps for four hours, then conducts meetings until prayers at noon. He sleeps for two hours in the afternoon before beginning a new day. Some residents say he leaves the barrani, a two-story brick building up the winding alley where he lives, only to pray on the roof. There, he has a view of the dome of the Imam Ali shrine, the burial place of Shiite Islam's most revered saint.
Those who have met Sistani describe a forceful personality, with an extremely sharp intellect molded by the seminary's emphasis on logic. Despite more than 50 years in Iraq, he still speaks Arabic with a heavy Persian accent, and he does nothing to conceal his Iranian origins. Sistani rarely if ever smiles, they say, nor does he get angry. But unlike his mentor Khoei, who would often answer in one- or two-word phrases such as ''possible'' or ''not possible,'' Sistani is said to be an engaging conversationalist.
If disagreements persist, he is said to choose silence as a sign of disapproval. In April, Sistani issued a fatwa or religious edict, forbidding looting. When looting persisted, recalled Fatih Karmani, a 33-year-old resident of Najaf, Sistani closed his barrani in protest for three days. Only after appeals from tribal leaders, who for decades have served to protect the clergy, did he reopen the office to the public.
''He expected a response,'' Karmani said. ``He expected people to obey his fatwa.''
Adnan Pachachi, the current head of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, visited Sistani recently, delivering a letter from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that cast doubt on the feasibility of elections. Sistani's reaction was sharp. ''We did not ask Kofi Annan to issue a fatwa from New York, but to send experts to Iraq to assess the situation on the ground,'' Mohammed Aal Yahya Musawi, an advisor to Sistani, quoted him as saying.
Sistani has refused to meet U.S. officials, forcing them to rely on Iraqi interlocutors perceived by the Americans as having their own agendas and interests. In recent months, he has exchanged letters with the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer.
Sistani's political activism has surprised many, even his supporters. In April, he issued statements insisting that the clergy play no direct role in politics. But he soon began weighing in with opinions that drove to the heart of Iraq's future. In June, he issued a fatwa insisting that delegates to a constitutional convention be elected, followed by statements in December insisting on a direct vote for a transitional government. Tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites have echoed his demands in protests.
''He's driven by fear,'' Rubaie said, fear of secularism and ``fanatic liberalism.'' |
