[Mb-civic] Iraqi Cleric Takes Center Stage

[Michael Butler]

latimes.com
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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Iraqi Cleric Takes Center Stage
Having guided a Shiite alliance to likely victory, Grand Ayatollah Sistani
is in a position to mold the new government and the constitution.
By Alissa J. Rubin
Times Staff Writer

February 6, 2005

BAGHDAD ‹ Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the black-turbaned cleric who was the
architect of what appears to be a landslide victory by Shiite Muslims in
last week's landmark Iraqi elections, is now poised to shape the new
government, including its choice of prime minister and the drafting of the
country's constitution.

Iraq's senior most Shiite cleric, Sistani has made it his chief cause to
propel his community, long oppressed under Saddam Hussein, to the leadership
of one of the Middle East's most prominent countries. And he is on his way
to succeeding: The slate he helped pick, the United Iraqi Alliance, appears
to have won more than triple the votes of the next-highest slate, that of
interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite.

"What he wants is influence over the constitution-writing process," said
Mowaffak Rubaie, a prominent Shiite politician. "He wants to be sure it's
done right."

The electoral sweep gives Shiites allied with Sistani a measure of power
that they have not had in Iraq in centuries. But for the U.S., their victory
also raises the specter of an Islamic state with more ties and affinities to
Iran than with any other country in the region.

The extent to which Iraq becomes an Islamic or a secular state will be
largely in the hands of this Iranian-born cleric, who, like most of the
ayatollahs who surround him, has not met with U.S. diplomats or their
British counterparts since the invasion in 2003.

Shiites represent about 10% of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, but in Iraq,
they are in the majority, believed to make up about 60% of the population.
The only other countries in which they predominate are Iran and Bahrain.

Sistani's Alliance slate has secured about 69% of the 3.2 million votes
counted so far in the national assembly election, or about 38.5% of the
total cast, according to a tabulation by the Los Angeles Times. Although
that percentage will drop once the Kurdish provinces of the north are
counted, the Alliance's share will almost certainly continue to be well over
50%.

Although the 74-year-old Sistani insists that he wants nothing to do with
politics, he has been arguably the most important figure on the Iraqi
political scene almost from the day the Americans entered the country.

Early in the occupation, he championed direct elections ‹ a demand that the
U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority accepted only reluctantly. He also
insisted that the constitution could only be written by a body directly
elected by Iraqis.

A year ago, hundreds of thousands of his followers took to the streets to
support a faster timetable than one proposed by the U.S. and, even more
impressively, Sistani was able to send them home, as if he were turning off
a tap.

Once elections were set, he engineered the formation of a largely Shiite
slate of candidates, many with a religious orientation. Heading the list is
Abdelaziz Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq and a cleric who spent nearly 20 years in exile in Iran during the
Hussein regime.

Three of Sistani's envoys, all clerics, are on the list, and the Dawa Party,
a theocratic Shiite party with ties to Iran, has a strong presence on it.

But Sistani also included those without ties to religious groups, such as
Ahmad Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, and independents such
as nuclear scientist Hussein Shahristani.

Sistani let the slate use his picture on its campaign materials and he
issued a fatwa, or religious opinion, making voting a duty on a par with
fasting in Ramadan.

But the next phase will have even greater consequences. Under the
transitional administrative law that governs the political process, the
national assembly that was just elected will name a committee to draft a
permanent constitution. The panel can include members of the assembly and
outsiders to write the document, which must be approved by the full assembly
and put to a popular referendum to take effect.

Sistani's associates say he has prepared for this moment for years. Although
he has lived a cloistered life in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, immersed in
religious study, he is said to be passionately interested in politics and
can converse in depth about different systems of government.

>From his office on a narrow street in Najaf's Old City where the small brick
houses are jammed together, Sistani has a far-reaching network of
representatives that stretches from Pakistan to Lebanon to Britain.

He keeps in constant touch with them through e-mail as well as by telephone.
His high-speed Internet connection is similar to the kind used by large
corporations and governments, according to an Iraqi government official
familiar with the system. His staff uses it to research any subject in which
the cleric takes an interest.

His son Mohammed Ridha is one of his chief assistants and is deeply involved
in politics. Mohammed Jawad, his other son, is a clerical scholar.

"Sayyid Sistani knows about the French Revolution, the American Revolution.
He had read about the election in East Timor," Shahristani, the nuclear
scientist, said. "I remember when I went to see him, I joked and said how
impressed I was at how much he had read."

According to Shahristani, Sistani replied: "We read all your books. You
don't read all your books, but we have the time ‹ we are just sitting here"
and gestured to the spare reception room where the cleric greets visitors,
who sit as he does, on flat floor cushions.

A cleric friend said Sistani had readied himself to wrestle with
constitutional principles. "He is knowledgeable about the American, French
and German constitutions and the British unwritten constitution," said Sheik
Jalaludin Saghir, the chief cleric at the Bratha mosque in Baghdad, one of
the city's largest Shiite mosques.

But it is unclear exactly what kind of government Sistani wants. Because he
does not give interviews to Western reporters, the only way to gauge his
leanings is to talk to Shiite clerics and politicians who have met with him
and to read his copious writings.

Sistani has explicitly distanced himself from Iran ‹ he refused to meet with
a delegation from the Iranian Foreign Ministry who came to help resolve
troubles with the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. The implication
is that he wants to make it clear both to his Iraqi followers and to the
Iranians that he will not take orders from his Persian neighbors.

He also doesn't support the Iranian theocracy that is based on the late
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's doctrine of velayat-e-faqih, or rule of
religious jurists.

But Sistani, who was born in the Iranian city of Mashad, a pilgrimage
center, does envision a powerful role for clerics in the new Iraq.

Secular members of the Alliance slate say Sistani does not plan to allow
clerics to serve in government, but several associates of Sistani, including
Saghir, say that there is no hard-and-fast rule.

In fact, although Sistani was reluctant to have clerics run for the
transitional national assembly, he bent that rule because he wanted to be
sure that people he trusted would be in a position to influence the writing
of the constitution, Shahristani said.

The areas in the constitution that matter to Sistani concern the role of
Islam in Iraq, Saghir said. "The main religion of Iraq is Islam, and laws
should not run counter to Islamic teachings," he said.

Sistani expects Islamic Sharia law to be enforced in certain areas,
including domestic matters that would have considerable impact on women,
possibly reducing their rights compared with what they would have under a
secular system.

Also, for instance, the sale of alcohol probably would be banned, Saghir
said. That would be a turnaround for Iraq, which was a secular state under
Hussein, where Christians sold alcohol and many Muslims drank despite
Koranic prohibitions.

"Sistani's position is analogous to that of the Christian Coalition in
American politics. He wants civil law and policy to be in conformance with
Islamic law and principle as far as possible," said Juan R. I. Cole,
associate chair of the history department at the University of Michigan.

"He will use fatwas and persuasion to try to influence parliamentary and
political debate on issues that are important to him," Cole said.

The ascendancy of the Shiites in Iraq will change the sectarian balance of
power in a region where Sunni Arabs dominate the political scene. For
Shiites to come to power in Iraq, the heart of the Arab world, has
tremendous symbolic significance and is certain to reverberate through
Shiite communities in the region.

"Shiite ascendancy in Iraq is a huge development for the Arab world," Cole
said. "Shiites in Saudi Arabia have been persecuted. Shiites in Iraq were
marginalized. Shiites in Lebanon were the poorest and least powerful group.
Shiites in Bahrain, despite being a majority, were marginalized.

"The Shiite-dominated government in Iraq will be a champion of Arab Shiite
rights. If the Shiites in Saudi Arabia are repressed, the prime minister of
Iraq will fly from Baghdad to Riyadh to complain."

Edward W. Gnehm Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Jordan and Kuwait and now a
professor of international relations at George Washington University, spoke
to the fears of the Sunnis in the region.

"Other, mostly Sunni states will be more afraid that the outcome of the
Iraqi elections will embolden the Shiite minorities in their own country,
rather than what it portends for democracy in their countries," he said.

Jordan's King Abdullah II was among others who have warned that the
elections might create a "crescent" of Shiite dominance.

"Personally, I don't think we'll see a Shiite arc that goes from Lebanon to
Iraq and Iran, but that would be the nightmare of Sunni states," Gnehm said.

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