Iraq's hard-line Shi'ites vow to resist US agenda
BAGHDAD -- A vociferous and well-organized faction of extremist Shi'ite Muslims is mobilizing to challenge the new government that emerges from Iraq's recent election and to push for a hard line against the United States.
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The religious and political leaders are loosely allied with the militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and include supporters of Sadr's uprising in several cities last April. In recent days, including at prayer services yesterday, they vowed to use seats they expect to win in the Transitional National Assembly to demand a timetable for the departure of US forces.
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One key leader, Fatah al-Sheikh, seen as Sadr's most direct proxy in the political process, has also pledged to lead the opposition to Iraq's still unwritten new constitution. He also supports military resistance against US forces.
This burgeoning rejectionist wing is already exerting pressure on the United Iraqi Alliance, the mainstream Shi'ite coalition poised to command a majority in the new government. The Alliance has been busy fending off allegations by Iraqi secularists and some US officials that it is influenced by Iran and that it plans to push for an Islamic government. Its leaders are trying to position themselves as moderate modernizers, to assuage such fears.
But the more radical Shi'ite faction is launching a campaign against the Alliance, calling its members American stooges.
''We will be watching in the National Assembly to see who is truly representing the Iraqi people and who is acting as an American agent," Sheikh said this week.
Until recently, Sheikh was best known for editing a virulently anti-American and anti-Israeli newspaper published by Sadr's movement. His campaign slate was not officially endorsed by Sadr, but based on preliminary returns, Sheikh's group appears to be in a position to win at least six seats in the assembly.
Sheikh makes no secret of the brand of religious zeal, anti-Americanism, and Arab nationalism he would bring to the body.
Yesterday, he wore a funeral shroud to prayers, signifying his eagerness to be martyred. He promised to fight the new constitution, once it's written, and to publicly denounce those Iraqi politicians he views as too accommodating of American interests.
''We will be the judges in the parliament," Sheikh declared. ''If we see that a decision has been influenced by the Americans, we will denounce it and boycott it."
Such is the language of the Sadrist movement, a mix of nationalism and Islamism expounded by Moqtada al-Sadr's father. Many clerics and politicians consider themselves Sadrists even though they might not take orders from Moqtada, a junior cleric with much less stature than his father, who was the top Shi'ite cleric in Iraq when he was killed in 1999.
More mainstream Shi'ite politicians find their critics on Iraq's religious right vexing.
Adil Abdel-Mahdi, a United Iraqi Alliance leader who is seen as a likely choice for prime minister, considers them marginal.
''What is important is what the centers of power decide at the end of the day," said Abdel-Mahdi, a top leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, who has worked closely with American officials.
Islamic law has many currents, and those in single-minded pursuit of an Islamic constitution are unrealistic, he said, although he espouses a government heavily guided by Islam.
''Everything will be conducted according to the law and constitution," he said. ''We are not going to open the Koran and decide."
He and other United Iraqi Alliance leaders will have to answer clerics who accuse them of selling out. While their clout is impossible to quantify, Sadrist imams draw hundreds of thousands every Friday in the poor Shi'ite areas of Iraq, including Sadr City in Baghdad, and the southern cities of Kufa, Amara, and Basra.
One of those men is Sahib Ubeid al-Amri, who heads a Sadrist outreach group called ''The Martyrs of Allah."
Outside the Fatima Azzahra mosque on the outskirts of Najaf, the headquarters of Sadr's organization in that city, Amri was recently distributing copies of a proposed Islamic constitution. It was written by Kadhum al-Haeri, a senior Iraqi cleric who lives in the Iranian holy city of Qom, and was based on the teachings of Moqtada al-Sadr's uncle, a revered cleric. The document was central in inspiring the constitution in neighboring Iran after the ayatollahs took control in 1979.
The cover proclaims that the Untied States wants to promulgate its ''infidel agenda" through a secular Iraqi constitution that threatens Islam and Iraq.
Among other things, it proposes a council of Shi'ite clerics who would review -- and have the authority to veto -- every law passed by the National Assembly, just like Iran's Guardians Council.
''The drafters of our new constitution cannot ignore this book," Amri said. ''It is the true representation of justice."
Sadr himself hasn't preached in public since August, when the US military routed his fighters in Najaf and his Mahdi Army uprising subsided.
But his imams and newspapers continue to spew a venomous party line against Iraqi politicians, the United States, and Israel.
Yesterday, at mosques across the country, imams issued a coordinated statement condemning Arab leaders who met with Israelis on Tuesday at Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, calling on ''Arab people to stand up to these events and not walk hand in hand with Zionists who killed the Palestinian people."
Sadr's support is usually seen as coming from the slums of Sadr City, while Baghdad's Kadhimiya neighborhood, home to one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines and many of the city's oldest Shi'ite families, is seen as a stronghold for the moderate United Iraqi Alliance.
But in the heart of Kadhimiya, supporters of Sadr are already organizing against the new government, teaming up with unlikely allies: disaffected Sunni Arab nationalists.
Sheik Ali Jabouri, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Founders' Conference, which is part of the rejectionist Shi'ite faction, blasts the mainstream Shi'ite coalition as ''pro-occupation" opportunists who won by ''playing the sectarian card," misusing the image of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's senior Shi'ite cleric, and threatening uneducated voters with eternal damnation unless they went to the polls.
Jabouri rejects the position taken by many moderate Shi'ites that clerics should stay out of politics, saying Muslims are obliged to create a just society. ''Religion and politics are one thing," he said.
He said he will work from outside the political system, coordinating closely with Sheikh, to block any constitution that's not sufficiently Islamic or gives too much autonomy to Kurds.
Some of Sadr's followers, such as Sheikh, hew to a more nationalist line, concentrating on their desire to see US military forces retreat to bases and eventually leave Iraq altogether. His first priority is to seek the release from prison of several Sadr aides arrested since the April uprising.
Others, such as Ali Smesim, the most senior cleric in Sadr's coterie, are concentrating on religious issues, arguing for a purely Islamic constitution.
Smesim also has started taking broadsides at SCIRI and the Da'wa Party, the two mainstream Shi'ite parties that form the cornerstone of the United Iraqi Alliance. ''SCIRI has one foot in Iran and one in America. The Da'wa has one foot in Iran and one in Britain," he said. ''Both are like old men creeping toward their graves."
There are also leading clerics not affiliated with Sadr, such as Ayatollah Mohammed Yacoubi, who are pressuring Shi'ite parties to take a more religious position.
Yacoubi's top aide, Sheik Abbas Khalifa, explained at the cleric's headquarters in Najaf that nothing in the new constitution should contradict Islamic law -- including inheritance laws, which he said must grant sons twice as much as daughters.
''We don't want to see equality between men and women," he said. ''This is from the Koran, from God."
Anne Barnard of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com. 
