Shiite Clerics Clashing Over How to Reshape Iraq

Tuesday, August 25, 2003

By Neil MacFarquhar

New York Times Writer

Conservatives in Najaf view Mr. Sadr and his followers as rabble-rousers. The difference between the two groups is readily apparent during any religious event, as stark as the difference between a rave crowd and a group of symphonygoers.

NAJAF, Iraq -- NYT
The clerics who hold sway over Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority are locked in a violent power struggle pitting the older, established ayatollahs counseling patience with the occupation against a younger, more militant faction itching to found an Islamic state.

The militants are suspected of carrying out a series of attacks, including one over the weekend, engineered to eliminate or at least unsettle Najaf's religious scholars just as Shiites feel their moment has come. The bloodshed started in April with the murder of a prominent young cleric, Abdel Majid al-Khoei, inside the city's most holy shrine. That slaying remains such a tinderbox issue that the police and prosecutors only reluctantly confirmed for the first time today that some 12 suspects had been rounded up this month and more arrests were pending.

The tense standoff, as described by clerics from both factions, is playing out among the twisting alleyways of this holy seat, a battle for the leadership of Iraq's Shiite community, which accounts for 60 percent of the country's population of about 25 million.

In one corner sit the senior ayatollahs clustered around Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, all betting that it is only a matter of time before the United States delivers a democratic state that the Shiites can dominate through sheer numbers.

Arrayed against them are more activist opponents of the American-led occupation who back Moktada al-Sadr and who believe that Shiites should aggressively pursue an Islamic state modeled on clerical rule in Iran.

"It goes back in history to two distinct lines in Muslim and particularly Shiite thought," said Sheik Shaibani, a 33-year-old cleric who runs the Islamic court in Najaf in defiance of the elder clergy.

"There are those who say you must undertake jihad in times of oppression, and those who say we must stay silent until the reappearance of the Mahdi," he said, referring to the Shiite savior.

Although not calling for an outright holy war, the young clerics hint at the possibility. No one points the finger directly at Mr. Sadr, the descendant of a long line of illustrious clerics, but the police, prosecutors and Americans in Iraq, not to mention ordinary Najafis, single out his group as the font of violence. "Everyone in the city was expecting something like this to happen," Qassim Shabbar, a Najaf merchant, said of Mr. Sadr's possible role in the latest bloodshed. A bombing on Sunday outside the residence of a conservative ayatollah killed three men.

Shadowing the entire discussion about Shiites' power is the question of Iran's role here. Officially, the Iranians have said they want a stable, democratic Iraq, expecting that it will bring Shiite dominion.
(More: NYTimes.com)
2003 © The New York Times Company.

Dan