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Majority branch of Islam asserting power after 35 years of suppression

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

By John Daniszewski, Los Angeles Times

MAHMOUDIYA, Iraq -- As women pick through a vendor's basket of ripe tomatoes near a burnt-out Iraqi tank on this busy stretch of road a few miles south of Baghdad, the sense that life is resuming after war is inescapable.

All seems normal -- except for the music blaring from the loudspeaker of the nearby mosque.

It is a rhythmic song honoring Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad, and it alternates with a message to the people from Iraq's senior Shiite Muslim leader, 73-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. "Do no harm to the Sunnis," it tells them. "But if they harm you, you may defend yourselves."

A few short weeks ago, only the Sunni-dominated Baath Party would have dared to issue edicts to the Iraqi people -- in the name of President Saddam Hussein.

But in the absence of a government since Saddam's ouster April 9, the voice of Sistani and the network of Shiite seminaries that he heads -- the Hawza I-Ilima -- is increasingly the authority that Iraqis heed.

And the unstated message to Sunni Muslims and Christians is that the era of Shiite power has come in Iraq, commensurate with their two-thirds share of the population.

After being suppressed for 35 years by Saddam's Baath Party, the leaders and faithful of the Shiite branch of Islam, who represent perhaps 16 million Iraqis, are asserting themselves and moving into the power vacuum left by the almost-overnight collapse of Iraq's secular government.

The U.S. military may control the roads, ports and skies of Iraq, but in any neighborhood where Shiites are in the majority, one is likely to find white-turbaned sheiks and imams who have begun making the day-to-day decisions and policies.

The Shiites' emerging power will be on display this week, as they converge in massive numbers on Karbala, where Hussein was martyred in a decisive 7th century battle that became the symbol for suffering and self-sacrifice among Shiites for 1,300 years. Bands of pilgrims with green and black flags, singing and beating themselves with religious fervor, have been walking to Karbala for days to gather today, which marks the end of the annual 40 days of mourning for Hussein's death.

There are additional manifestations of Shiite ascendancy. The sprawling low-income district of Baghdad known as Saddam City, home to 2 million people, most of them Shia, has been renamed by its residents as Sadr City after a Shiite leader assassinated by Saddam's government in 1999.

Disciples of Sistani have fanned out to take control of local services. They are supplying the hospitals with money to pay staff and are cooking food and providing clothing for patients. On the security front, young men authorized by the Hawza seminary are standing guard at street corners in plain gray uniforms, wielding Kalashnikov rifles. Their duties include arresting and imprisoning looters and monitoring the streets.

In Karbala, too, the imam of the Al-Husseini mosque has become the acknowledged power in the city. Old imams considered close to the former government have been booted out and replaced by a former political prisoner who recognizes Sistani as "my master" as he adjudicates disputes in the city.

In northern Baghdad's Kadhimiya neighborhood, residents have been gathering each day since the ouster of Saddam for religious demonstrations. One day last week, thousands led a white horse representing the steed of the prophet Muhammad's grandson through the streets with a replica of the two-pointed sword with which he is said to have fought. Other men gathered to read Sistani's words plastered on walls, with some acknowledging that they want an Islamic state.

The resurgence of Shiite Islam after decades of suppression under Saddam is frightening to Sunnis and Christians, who fear that it could lead to a Shiite-dominated state similar to Iran. The influence of Hawza already is obvious from Basra in the south to Baghdad -- and in some southern towns, de facto governments headed by religious leaders already have been set up.

"In the past, the government was controlling these people. Now that there is no government, no one is controlling them. So we are afraid," said a 35-year-old Christian, Nabila Isha, in Baghdad's Karada neighborhood.

The area is home to Christians and Shiites, and the mosques have been broadcasting Shia messages into the homes of Christian families, and pro-Shiite graffiti has begun to appear on walls.

In the former Saddam City, which holds 2 million of Baghdad's 5 million people, Baath Party offices have been turned into "Husseiniya" -- or Shiite centers of worship.

Though Shiite clerics are cautious about discussing their ambitions, many secular Iraqis, Kurds, Sunnis and Christians assume that their ultimate aim is an Islamic republic.

"They will destroy the whole country, those radicals," one Kurdish intellectual in Baghdad said. "I am quite sure they want to control the government and make another Islamic republic. They will create another Afghanistan and Iran in Iraq."

That is not the vision being promulgated, however, by one of Sistani's representatives in Sadr City. Sheik Ali Saadi, 33, in white turban and black robe with a long face and dark beard, explained his role as being first of all to help residents. "We don't want to provoke problems that would lead to another war with each other," he said. But he asserted that a strong Shiite presence in the next Iraqi government is vital because "the Shia listen only to us."

Saadi said he and other Hawza graduates have assumed judicial duties, including making arrests and jailing offenders, sometimes in mosques.

Like most Shiite leaders, he does not hide his wish that American soldiers would leave the country as soon as possible. "We need Americans for the moment because there are still a lot of Fedayeen and a lot of agents of Saddam Hussein," he said. "When they are gone, however, then the Americans have to leave."