Inside a Baghdad mosque, Shi'ites learn to speak as one

BAGHDAD -- Although prayers don't begin until noon, men gather outside the Mouhsin mosque in Sadr City early on Fridays. It's the one formal day off a week in this Shi'ite district of 2 million, where unemployment is surpassed only by religious fervor, so it's something of a social occasion.

Alternately raucous and sober, yesterday's prayers offered a stark glimpse of how Shi'ite clerics get their followers to speak in one voice on the social and political issues of the day.

"We thirst for martyrdom," said 24-year-old Abdul Allah Abed, a carpenter who also volunteers in the Army of the Mahdi. "We are not scared." He, like the hundreds of other Mahdi members ringing the mosque area, wore all black; the group, thousands strong, answers to Moqtada al-Sadr, the young firebrand anti-American cleric.

Suddenly, a man wearing a full-body faded green denim ensemble appeared. "You can't talk to the people," the nameless minder told the reporter. "You can only talk to the sheik."

Shortly after noon, a crowd of 10,000 men on prayer rugs, filling the entire street in front of the mosque, chanted as one to the call of the imam, Sheik Nassir al-Saidi.

"Yes, yes to Islam! Yes, yes to al-Sadr!" they shouted after the imam offered a prayer to all the martyred descendants of the Prophet Mohammed.

Saidi is a top aide to Sadr who has fashioned a fierce bloc of support among urban Shi'ites. Saidi's sermon perhaps explains why.

First, he excoriated certain pamphlets that portray some Shi'ite leaders with prostitutes. "Find out who is printing these pictures," Saidi instructed the crowd. "They have no fear of God."

He swiftly turned to his next point: the Army of the Mahdi. Many consider it a militia, and its members provide security at some religious sites, but Sadr has said it is simply a community-oriented religious group. Saidi offered another prayer from the Koran, then raised the subject of the Iraqi Media Network, the country's lone public television station, which is supervised by the US-led occupation. Last week three of its employees were killed in Baqubah, a town 30 miles north of Baghdad.

"We have warned the Iraqi Media Network repeatedly not to show films with nudity. They continue to show these films," Saidi thundered. "They will be punished from God, and they will go to hell."

He also denounced the interim constitution approved by the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which sets the structure for a caretaker government to supervise national elections.

"You should not say you support the interim constitution. You should say you reject it," Saidi said, adding that God would send supporters of the plan to hell.

Finally, in a sermon heavy on references to the news media although the only journalists visible were a reporter and a camera crew at the crowd's edge, Saidi cautioned his followers. "I ask you not to answer questions from the media. You will answer with ignorance," Saidi said. "Send them to the sheiks, who better understand the issues."

As much as any other group, if not more, Shi'ites were crushed under the boot of Saddam Hussein's regime. Hussein banned observance of most major religious holidays, and killed Shi'ite clerics who rose to prominence, including Sadr's father and uncle.

Under Hussein, Shi'ite clerics of the Hawza, Iraq's center of religious education, versed themselves in clandestine organization, set up schools, and circulated banned religious texts.

So in post-Hussein Iraq, they were well positioned to transform their underground network into a powerful national machine. And as they grow more confident in their strength, some clerics -- like Saidi -- have adopted new techniques, like ordering supporters to cease speaking for themselves.

Friday prayers at the same mosque in December and August revealed vibrant discussions about politics and the proper role for clerics in a democratic Iraq. No such voices were heard in the crowd yesterday before prayers, at least not as long as the sheiks and the man in the green denim were watching.

"We do not fear death. We put death in front of our eyes," said a man who seemed to be in his 50s and refused to say his name under the mosque minder's gaze.

The Shi'ites are only now approaching their potential, he said, and no attacks -- like last month's bombings that killed 181 at holy shrines -- will derail them from their rightful place at the center of a new Iraqi order.

"We wish for an explosion right now so that we can be martyrs." With that, he nodded at the man in the green denim, retreated to a concrete block, and stared at the imam, who himself reclined silently in the shade of the mosque's outer wall, preparing to deliver his prayer speech.

Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com.