URL:http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol6No2/Keeping%20the%20Shi'ites%20Straight.htm
[Note however that it was written in April and some things have happened since then.]
>From Juan Cole's blog, "Informed Comment:"
Monday, September 08, 2003
*An assassination attempt against Grand Ayatollah Hussain Bashir
al-Najafi has been foiled in Najaf reports AFP The Badr Corps
militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq
captured the man in Najafis home on Sunday. He confessed to being
a member of the Fedayeen of Saddam Hussain, and also said that he
had killed two Americans in Kazimiyah with a sniper rifle. (This
confession bolsters the case I have been making, for the violence
in Najaf being the work of Sunni Iraqi nationalists with at least
some residual Baath loyalties).
Some background here: Ayatollah Hussain Bashir al-Najafi is one of
four leading Shiite scholars in Najaf, including Grand Ayatollah
Ali Sistani, Muhammad Sa`id al-Hakim, and Ishaq al-Fayyad or
Fayyaz. Sistani and Hakim are of Iranian extraction. Al-Fayyad is
an Afghan, though I do not know if he is Tajik or Hazara.
Hussain Bashir al-Najafi is from Pakistan originally. These four
are political quietists and do not think that clergymen should
enter politics directly. They do want Islamic law to be the law of
the land, as in Sudan, so that is not the same as believing in a
separation of religion and state. Their quietism means that they
have not taken strong political positions opposing the US invasion
and presence, which in turn makes them an asset for the United
States.
Saddams people have been trying to kill Najafi for years. In 1999,
the US State Department Human Rights report noted of Iraq that the
UN Special Rapporteur received detailed information concerning
what he has called " political killings," described as the
preplanned killings of individuals carried out by government
agents. Following the 1998 killings of two internationally
respected religious scholars, Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Mirza Ali
Al-Gharawi, age 68, and Ayatollah Sheikh Murtada Al-Burujerdi, age
69, the Special Rapporteur expressed his concern in a letter to
the Government that the murders might be part of a systematic
attack by Iraqi officials on the independent leadership of Shi'a
Muslims in Iraq. The Government did not respond and the attacks
continued. On January 6, Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Bashir Hussain
Al-Najafi and members of his seminary were attacked while
performing religious duties. A grenade thrown at them killed three
persons. Although wounded, Al-Najafi survived the attack.
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/1999/410.htm
Saddam killed so many senior clerics that if the four grand
ayatollahs in Najaf were assassinated, there would be few
alternatives from the older, respected generation.
That would leave the door open to radicals such as Grand Ayatollah
Kazim al-Haeri, often called the fifth. He is in favor of a
Khomeini-style government in Iraq and despises the US. He may yet
come back to Najaf, where he has opened an office (he is in exile
in Qom, Iran). Likewise, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein
Fadlallah, often called the spiritual inspiration for Lebanons
radical Hizbullah party and militia, is from Najaf and may well go
back there. Fadlallah is no Khomeinist. But a Najaf dominated by
al-Haeri and Fadlallah would be a nightmare for the Americans.
Likewise, assassinations of the older generation help Muqtada
al-Sadr, who is widely popular despite his youth, especially among
the young urban poor.
It seems clear that the Baathists are still carrying on their old
campaign of assassination in Najaf, this time to push the Shiite
community in a radical and anti-American direction by depriving it
of the leadership of quietists and pragmatists.