Muqtada al-Sadr
Muqtada al-Sadr (Arabic: مقتدى الصدر, romanized: Muqtadā aṣ-Ṣadr; born 4 August 1974)[3] is an Iraqi Shia Muslim cleric, politician and militia leader. He is the leader of the Sadrist Movement[4] and the leader of the Peace Companies, a successor to the militia he had previously led during the American military presence in Iraq, the Mahdi Army. In 2018, he joined his Sadrist political party to the Saairun alliance, which won the highest number of seats in the 2018 and 2021 Iraqi parliamentary elections.[5]
Muqtada al-Sadr
4 August 1974[1]
Najaf, Ba'athist Iraq
Al-Ahrar Bloc
(2014–2018)
Alliance Towards Reforms (Saairun)(2018–2021)[2]
Titles[edit]
He belongs to the prominent al-Sadr family that hails from Jabal Amel in Lebanon, before later settling in Najaf. Sadr is the son of Muhammad al-Sadr, an Iraqi religious figure and politician who stood against Saddam Hussein, and the nephew of Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr. He is often styled with the honorific title Sayyid.
His formal religious standing within the Shi'i clerical hierarchy is comparatively mid-ranking. As a result of this, in 2008 Sadr claimed for himself neither the title of mujtahid (the equivalent of a senior religious scholar) nor the authority to issue any fatwas.[6] In early 2008, he was reported to be studying to be an ayatollah, something that would greatly improve his religious standing.[7]
Family[edit]
Muqtada al-Sadr is the fourth son of a famous Iraqi Shia cleric, the late Grand Ayatollah Muhammad al-Sadr. He is also the son-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Both were revered for their concern for the poor.[8][9]
Muqtada is a citizen of Iraq; his great-grandfather is Ismail as-Sadr. Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, Muqtada al-Sadr's father, was a respected figure throughout the Shi'a Islamic world. He was murdered, along with two of his sons, allegedly by the government of Saddam Hussein. Muqtada's father-in-law was executed by the Iraqi authorities in 1980. Muqtada is a cousin of the disappeared Musa al-Sadr, the Iranian-Lebanese founder of the popular Amal Movement.[10]
In 1994, Sadr married one of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr's daughters.[11] As of 2008, he had no children.[11]
Political positions[edit]
Muqtada al-Sadr gained popularity in Iraq following the toppling of the Saddam government by the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.[12] Sadr has on occasion stated that he wishes to create an "Islamic democracy".
Sadr commands strong support (especially in the Sadr City district in Baghdad, formerly named Saddam City but renamed after the elder Sadr). After the fall of the Saddam government in 2003, Muqtada al-Sadr organized thousands of his supporters into a political movement, which includes a military wing formerly known as the Jaysh al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army.[13] The name refers to the Mahdi, a long-since disappeared Imam who is believed by Shi'as to be due to reappear when the end of time approaches. This group periodically engaged in violent conflict with the United States and other Coalition forces, while the larger Sadrist movement has formed its own religious courts and organized social services, law enforcement and prisons in areas under its control.[14] Western media often referred to Muqtada al-Sadr as an "anti-American" or "radical" cleric.[15]
His strongest support came from the class of dispossessed Shi'a, like in the Sadr City area of Baghdad. Many Iraqi supporters see in him a symbol of resistance to foreign occupation.[16] The Mahdi army was reported to have operated death squads during the Iraqi Civil War.[14]
In a statement received by AFP on 15 February 2014, Sadr announced the closure of all offices, centers and associations affiliated with Al-Shaheed Al-Sadr, his father, inside and outside Iraq, and announced his non-intervention in all political affairs, adding that no bloc will represent the movement inside or outside the government or parliament.[17] Several times he has called for all paramilitary groups recognised by the Iraqi state to be dissolved after the complete defeat of ISIL and that all foreign forces (including Iran) then leave Iraqi territory. He surprised many when he visited the crown princes of both Saudi Arabia, for the first time in 11 years,[18] and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2017 and earlier and was criticized in some Iranian circles.[8] In April 2017, he distinguished himself from other Iraqi Shiite leaders in calling on Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and save the country from more bloodshed.[9] Sadr's efforts to strengthen relations between Saudi Arabia and Iraq mirror those of former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.[18]
Muqtada is widely suspected of ordering numerous assassinations against high-ranking Shi'ite clergy, including a 2003 bombing of the house of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Saeed al-Hakim,[19] and the 10 April 2003 murder of Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Majid al-Khoei at a mosque in Najaf.[20] On 13 October 2003, fighting broke out in Karbala, when al-Sadr's men attacked supporters of moderate Shi'ite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani near the Imam Hussein shrine.
Opposition to US presence[edit]
2003[edit]
Shortly after the US-led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath regime, al-Sadr voiced opposition to the Coalition Provisional Authority. He subsequently stated that he had more legitimacy than the Coalition-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. He granted his first major Western television interview to Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, in which al-Sadr famously said "Saddam was the little serpent, but America is the big serpent."[21]
In May 2003, al-Sadr issued a fatwa that became known as the al-Hawasim (meaning 'the finalists' – a term used to refer to the looters of post-invasion Iraq) fatwa.[22] The fatwa allowed theft and racketeering on the condition that the perpetrators pay the requisite khums to Sadrist imams,[23] saying that "looters could hold on to what they had appropriated so long as they made a donation (khums) of one-fifth of its value to their local Sadrist office." The fatwa alienated many older members of his father's movement,[23] as well as mainstream Shiites,[24] and the Shia establishment and property-owning classes from the Sadrists.[22] However, the fatwa strengthened his popularity among the poorest members of society, notably in Sadr City.[25] It has been claimed that the original fatwa was actually issued by Sadr's advisor Grand Ayatollah Kazem Husseini Haeri, and that al-Sadr was simply loyally issuing the same instruction.[22]
Al-Sadr is suspected in US news media of having ordered the assassination of rival Shia leader Abdul-Majid al-Khoei in 2003, a charge he denies and which remains unproven.[26]
Post-US withdrawal[edit]
2011–2020[edit]
On 5 January 2011, Sadr returned from Iran, to Najaf, having spent four years out of the country after vowing never to return unless the American military forces left.[50]
Prior to his arrival in Najaf, he had been instrumental in the formation of the 2011 Iraqi government.
Following the US withdrawal from Iraq, Sadr continued to be an influential figure in Iraqi politics, associated with the Al-Ahrar bloc, whose Shi'a factions are still at war with not only the government but also the Sunni factions.[51] However, whereas during the war al-Sadr was known for advocating violence, in 2012 he began to present himself as a proponent of moderation and tolerance and called for peace.[52][53] According to Britannica, "although Sadr himself was once an image of Iraqi Shiʿi militancy, he came to see sectarianism as a source of dysfunction and corruption in government and began steering his supporters away from sectarianism."[54]
In February 2014, Sadr announced that he was withdrawing from politics and dissolving the party structure to protect his family's reputation.[55]
However, later in 2014, he called for the formation of "Peace Companies", often mistranslated "Peace Brigades", to protect Shia shrines from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.[55] In June, these Peace Companies marched in Sadr City.[56] In addition to guarding shrines, the Peace Companies participated in offensive operations such as the recapture of Jurf al-Nasr in October 2014.[57] They suspended their activities temporarily in February 2015,[57] but were active in the Second Battle of Tikrit in March.[58]
Sadr is considered a populist by Western observers.[59][60] In 2015 he entered into an alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party and other secular groups "under an umbrella of security and corruption concerns", both long-standing issues of daily life in the country.[12] In March 2015, Sadr criticized the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, saying that "It [Saudi invasion of Yemen] is at odds with Islamic-Arabic unity".[61]