By Hamza HendawI and Qassim Abdul-Zahra
-
Associated Press
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Shiites pray at the Shrine of Imam Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of the 7th century Prophet Muhammad and the first Imam of the Shiites, in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad. Shiism is the dominant faith in Iraq. (Associated Press)Shiites pray at the Shrine of Imam Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of the 7th century Prophet Muhammad and the first Imam of the Shiites, in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad. Shiism is the dominant faith in Iraq. (Associated Press)
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Iran could use cleric to influence Iraqis
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Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi
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Ali Al-Sistani
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BAGHDAD — Iran is promoting a fundamentalist cleric close to its supreme leader as a possible successor for the aging spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites in a move that would give Tehran a powerful platform to influence its neighbor, according to sources close to Iraq’s religious leadership.
The 81-year-old spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is one of the most influential figures in Iraq, revered by its Shiite majority as well as by Shiites around the world.
In the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein, he was strong enough to shape the new Iraq, forcing American leaders and Iraqi politicians to revise parts of their transition plans he opposed.
The man Iran is maneuvering in hopes of eventually replacing him is Grand Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a prominent insider in the clerical hierarchy that rules Iran.
He was the head of Iran’s judiciary for 10 years until 2009, playing a major role in suppressing the country’s reform movement, and sits on one of Iran’s main ruling councils.
Campaigning in Najaf
Mr. Shahroudi has started to build a presence in Najaf, the Iraqi holy city of dozens of seminaries that is the center of Shiism’s religious leadership. Many of the world’s 200 million Shiites turn to Najaf for spiritual and political guidance.
Posters bearing his portrait have sprung up in the Baghdad district of Sadr City, a bastion of Shiite activism and home to some 2.5 million Shiites.
Iran’s growing influence in Iraq through the economy and ties with Shiite politicians in Baghdad is already a source of alarm to the United States and its Gulf Arab allies who see Shiite-majority Iran as a rival.
Mr. Shahroudi would boost Tehran’s voice in Iraq, if he ever succeeds Mr. al-Sistani as “al-marjaa al-akbar,” or “the greatest object of emulation.”
The 63-year-old Shahroudi would likely take an even more assertive political role than Mr. al-Sistani, who adheres to a school of Shiism that rejects formal rule by clerics. In Iran, the clerics hold ultimate power.
Also, Mr. al-Sistani has lived in seclusion for years. He is thought not to have left his Najaf house since 2004, and some feel he has grown out of step with Iraq’s new generation of young and empowered Shiites.
Disillusioned over unemployment and erratic services, many young Shiites are looking for a more dynamic religious leadership to counter what they see as the rising power of rival Sunni fundamentalists in the Arab world.
“Iraq’s Shiites are deeply politicized, and they have had enough of traditional marjaiyah [religious authorities] like al-Sistani‘s,” said one insider in Najaf, who is in daily contact with the city’s top clerics.
“Iran is taking advantage of this by working energetically to replace him with one of its own.”
Line of succession
The insider is one of six who are well connected to the Shiites’ secretive religious establishment in Najaf and in Baghdad. They said Mr. Shahroudi appears to be angling for the post. They spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Mr. al-Sistani, who was treated in London for heart problems in 2004, remains healthy and alert, according to visitors who saw him recently. But his advanced age has fueled speculation about his succession in Najaf.
The succession does not necessarily have to wait until Mr. al-Sistani’s death. It could effectively take place if he is deemed too old to guide his followers.
The position of al-marjaa al-akbar is considered the highest in Shia Islam’s spiritual hierarchy, and Mr. al-Sistani has been al-marjaa al-akbar since the 1990s.
Filling the post is done by an informal process of consensus among senior and middle-ranking clerics, aimed at choosing the learned and respected figure.
Ibrahim al-Baghdadi, Mr. Shahroudi’s top aide in Najaf, would not say if Mr. Shahroudi has ambitions for the position. Still, Mr. Shahroudi is laying the necessary groundwork.
He opened a representative office in Najaf in October and plans to visit the city soon, according to Mr. al-Baghdadi.
He has begun paying monthly stipends to poor seminary students, organizing “study circles” and collecting the “khoms” from followers - a tithe of a fifth of one’s income.
Any ayatollah with aspirations of becoming a marjaa must write a religious textbook known as a “Tawdih al-Masail,” or “Clarification of Issues,” laying out rules for daily religious practice. Mr. Shahroudi published his a year ago.
Dynamic leader
He is already known to be the spiritual leader of powerful Iraqi factions, including followers of the Badr Organization as well as most members of the Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah Brigades militia active in southern Iraq, and Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a hardline faction.
Among his students in Qom were Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, and Humam Hamoudi, a prominent Iraqi politician.
Mr. Shahroudi was born in Najaf to Iranian parents in a family of clerics that claims descent from the Prophet Mohammad. He studied under Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, a prominent scholar credited with modernizing Shiite doctrine before he was executed in 1980.
Mr. Shahroudi fled a 1979 crackdown against Shiites and took refuge in Iran.
There, he became the first leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a major opposition group of Iraqi Shiite exiles.
Mr. Shahroudi also rose in Iran’s clerical leadership. He is so close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he has been cited by many observers as his possible successor.
One of Mr. Shahroudi’s former students in Qom - now an Iraqi politician - said Mr. Shahroudi is strongly positioned.
“He is relatively young. He is familiar with modern day issues and has impeccable family pedigree,” he said. “The Shiite street wants a dynamic marjaa who can compensate it for the failure of the government.”
Sajad Jiyad @SajadJiyad
· Open
Iran could use cleric to influence Iraqis http://wtim.es/HBmcZc - yet more poor writing from Hendawi and the AP
15h Reidar Visser Reidar Visser @reidarvisser
· Open
-@SajadJiyad Aha. Qassim Abdul Zahra is BACK. He specialises in Sunni-Shia problems.
15h Sajad Jiyad Sajad Jiyad @SajadJiyad
· Open
@reidarvisser did you read the quote about majority of Shia being politicised and want rid of Sistani? If ever there was a wrong statement..
Reidar Visser Reidar Visser @reidarvisser
Close
@SajadJiyad If there really was a market for this in Iraq, why didn't Iran despatch someone like Kazim al-Haeri to Najaf long time ago?
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الشيخ محمد باقر الايرواني
نشأته وولادته
ينحدر الشيخ باقر نجل سماحة آية الله الشيخ محمد تقي الايرواني دام ظله من اسرة علمية معروفة في النجف الاشرف تنتهي الى جدها الأعلى المعروف بالفاضل الايرواني ـ المتتلمذ على يد العلمين الشيخ صاحب الجواهر والشيخ الانصاري قدس سرهما ـ الذي كان من أحد مراجع الدين المعروفين في النجف الاشرف .
ولد الشيخ سنة 1949 م وعاش ترعرع في مدينة النجف الاشرف . وقد درس الدراسة الاكاديمية ـ الابتدائية والثانوية والاعدادية ـ في مدارس منتدى النشر التي كان يشرف عليها مجموعة من العلماء برأسهم آية الله الشيخ محمد رضا المظفر قدس سره .
وقد شرع وهو في الصف الرابع الاعدادي في الدراسة الحوزوية ، فدرس المقدمات والسطوح العالية على يد مجموعة من فضلاء الحوزة آنذاك . وقد مارس دراسة مرحلة الخارج في الفقه على يد العلمين السيد الخوئي والسيد الشهيد الصدر قدس سرهما . وحضر بداية الدورة الاصولية الثانية للسيد الشهيد واستمر حتى الايام الاخيرة من حياته المباركة .
دراسته
حضر فترة من الزمن ايضاً بحث الاصول للمرجع الديني السيد علي السيستاني دام ظله وبحت الفقه للمرجع الديني السيد محمد سعيد الحكيم دام ظله .
وقد مارس الشيخ التدريس في حوزة النجف الاشرف وقد عرفته الحوزة مدرساً في السطوح العالية ، أي المكاسب والرسائل والكفاية .
وعلى اثر تأزم الاحداث في العراق في السنوات الاخيرة من الحرب العراقية الايرانية هاجر سماحة الشيخ الى مدينة قم المقدسة وشرح فيها بتدريس السطوح العالية لفترة خمس سنوات تقريباً .
ثم شرع بعد ذلك بتدريس الفقه والاصول على مستوى مرحلة الخارج وقد انهى خلال فترة عشر سنوات تقريباً تدريس دورة اصولية وشرع منذ سنتين في تدريس دورة اصولية ثانية .
وقد انهى في الفقه على مستوى الخارج تدريس كتاب القضاء والاجارة والخمس وشطر كبير من كتاب الصلاة ، وهو الآن مشغول بتدريس احكام البنوك ونرجو له التوفيق بالشروع في كتاب الصوم ان شاء الله تعالى وقد تخرّج على يده مجموعة كبيرة من تلاميذ الحوزة في النجف الاشرف وقم المقدسة
وقد الّف مجموعة من الكتب التي يمكن انتفاع طلبة الحوزة بها ، وهي :
1 ـ الاسلوب الثاني للحلقة الثالثة . اربعة اجزاء . وهو شرح للحلقة الثالثة من حلقات علم اصول الفقه للسيد الشهيد الصدر . وهو شرح بطريقة خاصة غير مألوفة في سائر الشروح .
2 ـ دروس تمهيدية في الفقه الاستدلالي . ثلاثة اجزاء . وهو دورة فقهية استدلالية باسلوب جديد . وقد شق في بعض الحوزات طريقة في التدريس . وقد كتبه الشيخ كبديل عن الروضة البهية .
3 ـ دوروس تمهيدية في القواعد الرجالية . جزء واحد . وهو مجموعة محاضرات في القواعد الرجالية القاها سماحة الشيخ على طلاب الحوزة العلمية في مدينة قم المقدسة في بداية هجرته اليها .
4 ـ دروس تمهيدية في القواعد الفقهية . جزءان . وهو مجموعة محاضرات في بعض القواعد الفقهية المهمة للطالب الحوزوي القاها سماحته على طلاب الحوزة العلمية في مدينة قم المقدسة .
5 ـ دروس تمهيدية في تفسير آيات الاحكام . جزءان تحت الطبع . وهو مجموعة محاضرات في تفسير آيات الاحكام القاها سماحته كالسابقين .
وهو الآن مشغول في كتابة كتاب كبديل عن مكاسب الشيخ الانصاري ، وقد تمّ انجاز كتاب الطهارة والصلاة منه ، وهما الآن يدرسان في بعض مدارس الحوزة العلمية في مدينة قم المقدسة .
ويمارس سماحة الشيخ منذ سنوات امامة الجماعة في الحسينية النجفية في مدينة قم المقدسة
===
The Struggle to Succeed Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani
A Letter From Najaf
By Paul McGeough
May 23, 2012
Article Summary and Author Biography
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Snapshot
Baghdad’s Phantom Power-Sharing Plan
Reidar Visser
Last month, a supposed power-sharing deal in Iraq ended the country's long political stalemate. But is the victory another case of wishful -- and dangerously naive -- thinking on the part of the United States?
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, third from right, with the Iranian leadership last year. (Courtesy Reuters)
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is rarely seen. The most revered spiritual leader for the world's 170 million Shiite Muslims, he hardly ever speaks in public. Some 90 miles south of Baghdad, in Najaf, the seat of Shiite religious power, people say that in the last few years the 82-year-old Sistani has grown frail and relies increasingly on one of his sons to carry out his duties. "He's a weak old man; soon he might have to go to London for more treatment," a local student of religious politics says. (Like most who were interviewed for this report, the student wished to remain anonymous.)
As Sistani ages, a struggle to succeed him has begun, putting the spiritual leadership of one of the world's foremost faiths in play. But with neighboring Iran moving to install its preferred candidate in the position, the secular political foundations of Iraq's fledgling democracy are at risk. Consequently, what amounts to a spiritual showdown could pose a challenge to Washington's hope for postwar Iraq to serve as a Western-allied, moderate, secular state in the heart of the Middle East.
Shia doctrine requires that an incumbent die before jockeying can begin in a succession process that is as opaque as it is informal. But Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the 64-year-old cleric who is widely seen as Tehran's preferred choice, has jumped the gun by sending an advance party to open an office in Najaf. This cohort works from a dust-coated building, painted in banded tones of white and salmon, just a couple of blocks from Sistani's office and home. On a recent visit, a scattering of shoes and sandals at the entrance suggested a gathering within, but a man who came to the door makes it clear: "We apologize, but we can't meet any journalists."
Without so much as setting foot in Najaf, Shahroudi is rolling out a sophisticated and expensive campaign -- reputedly bankrolled by Tehran. Key to Shahroudi's strategy has been luring Sistani and his followers into a costly bidding war for clerical loyalty. Clerics and seminarians are being offered an assortment of stipends, housing, and health services in the hope that they can be swayed.
A Najafi by birth, Shahroudi has lived much of his adult life in Iran. Under the patronage of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he rose to the top tiers of Iran's religious and political establishment. And in recent months Shahroudi has had several meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, most recently in Tehran in April. According to sources close to the religious and political leadership in Baghdad, Shahroudi has already informed some key Iraqi officials that he is positioning himself to take the spiritual helm of Shia Islam.
"Without Khamenei's support, he could not dream of doing this," a diplomat from the region who is based in Baghdad, and who spoke on condition of anonymity, says. Because of Shahroudi's stature in Iran, the diplomat says, he will always be seen as Tehran's candidate: "It is [Iranian] money and authority that'll make him Grand Ayatollah."
Shahroudi's challenge sets in conflict two opposing views of politics in Shiism. Iraqi Shiites have long held to the so-called quietist school of thought, a doctrine known more expansively as irshad wa tawjeeh, which translates as "guidance and direction" and is rooted in a sixteenth-century deal with the Persian monarchy by which the clerics of the day opted to remain above the political fray. Sistani's interventions in the early days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq were arguably a glaring exception to quietest thinking, but the ayatollah's singular objective at the time was to bend the will of the Americans in shaping a political process from which he and the clergy would ultimately step back. Now, Iraqis have had nearly a decade to judge contemporary application of Najaf's quietist theory.
In Iran, however, the 1979 revolution gave holy men full control of the political process. Although more than three messy decades of Islamic rule have stripped the varnish from wilayat al-faqih, "guardianship of the Islamic jurists," the revolutionary Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's constitutionally enshrined theory that God's authority is vested in the supreme leader and senior religious scholars, Tehran continues to insist that politics be guided by faith.
So in Baghdad today, this Iranian-backed intervention by Shahroudi appears to be a bid by Tehran to walk Iraq away from the pure mechanics of non-clerical democracy. "If we have a grand ayatollah who is against democracy, we have a problem," Sami al-Askari, one of Maliki's advisers, says. "We can't have someone who supports wilayat al-faqih. We want a moderate who will support the diversity of our nation." But even if he wanted to, it is unclear how much Maliki could do to halt the Iranian push in Najaf.
People who have met Shahroudi describe him more as a high-energy chief executive than the dour ayatollah that might be expected of a man in black. "Intelligent, pleasant, looks you in the eye; well-dressed, elegant, soft-spoken ... takes good care of his beard," a self-described friend of his says in private conversation. "He is loyal to his boss, non-confrontational, and serves his superior well."
Shahroudi's rise among Tehran's elite ranks stems from his loyalty to the ruling clergy in Iran. In 1989, Khomeini died without a successor, and greatness was thrust upon Shahroudi when Ali Khamenei emerged as the unlikely contender to replace the father of the revolution. The Iranian constitution requires that the leader be a marja, or senior ayatollah, but Khamenei had not studied sufficiently to earn the necessary qualification. "Shahroudi was given the task of teaching Khamenei to make him into a grand ayatollah. He worked hard for one year before declaring Khamenei to be qualified," Maliki's adviser Askari says, describing a scholarly venture that ordinarily takes a decade or more. "And for this service Shahroudi was awarded an appointment as head of the Iranian judicial system."
As an Iraqi abroad, Shahroudi carved a remarkable and, by some accounts, heavy-handed arc through the Iranian labyrinth. Cited in some quarters as a doctrinaire believer in Khomeini's wilayat al-faqih, Shahroudi was willing to crack down on the regime's opponents -- reportedly challenging opposition members of parliament, punishing students, and shuttering as many as 200 newspapers in 1999. Some reports suggest otherwise. The Washington Post notes an order that he issued in 2002, which was interpreted as an attempt to impose a moratorium on stoning as a punishment. And in the wake of the disputed presidential elections in 2009, reports surfaced that Shahroudi ordered a judicial investigation into complaints that political prisoners were being abused.
One Arab diplomat argues that on the Shia political spectrum, Shahroudi cuts a figure closer to that of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, the revered Iraqi scholar and the uncle and father-in-law of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The older Sadr, who grew close to Khomeini during the latter's exile in Najaf in the 1970s, argued that if the political process were geared toward changing the people, they in turn would change the national leadership. Khomeini insisted on the reverse -- change the ruler and he would change the people.
But were he to try, Shahroudi would have a hard time distancing himself from Tehran. He is a member of the powerful 12-man Guardian Council, selected by Khamenei to interpret the Iranian constitution and, among other things, vet all candidates for public office. Last year, the supreme leader again revealed his confidence in Shahroudi, naming him to head a team that mediates disputes between the president and the parliament.
What makes the Shahroudi challenge serious is the absence of a standout local candidate in Najaf. Together with Sistani, three other grand ayatollahs comprise the Hawza, a leadership collective in which Sistani is first among equals. Two of the three are unlikely succession nominees because they were born beyond the Shia heartlands. Mohammad Ishaq Fayyad, 82, is Afghan and Bashir Hussein al-Najafi, 70, is Pakistani. That leaves Mohammed Said al-Hakim, a 76-year-old Najaf native, as the only contender of any prominence, and he doesn't size up.
"Go to Najaf," the Maliki adviser Askari advised. "And the establishment will throw out names, but there is no clear successor." The establishment does exactly that. As Fadhil al-Milani, one of Najaf's more junior ayatollahs who is these days is based in London, says of the three who sit by Sistani: "We have prominent [ayatollahs] in Najaf who [would continue the Sistani] tradition -- to compare others to them is unacceptable."
As many as 100 junior ayatollahs will have a role in selecting the next spiritual leader. Loosely the equivalent of the Christian rank of bishops, they command a following among the faithful that translates into lobbying power. Despite efforts by the religious establishment to dress up the succession as a contemplative, spiritual selection during which the possible nominees bide their time, waiting passively to be informed of an outcome, in fact it will edge toward the grubbiness of civilian politicking.
"Money talks loudly, because if a potential successor doesn't have money to distribute and to pay salaries for some thousands of clergy around the Shia world, he'll not be the successor," a practiced observer of the process warns. "Who knows if [any of the Najaf contenders] has the right kind of money, but we know that Shahroudi does -- he has the cash, the PR, and the support of Iran. If I were Shahroudi, I'd give all the clergy and students a regular salary -- he's doing that. I'd bring all the Arabic-speaking clergy from Qom and Tehran to teach at Najaf -- he's done that."
And any effort to have Baghdad block Shahroudi's candidacy will be further constrained by the remarkable 2010 deal that kept Maliki in power despite his not winning a conclusive majority in the parliamentary elections. The kingmaker in that arrangement was Sadr, a radical Shiite who leans toward Iran. According to senior officials in Baghdad, Shahroudi is now grooming Sadr to become an ayatollah, a role that made him a key figure in bringing the young cleric to the table.
Since the 2003 invasion, the United States and its coalition allies have invested almost 5,000 soldiers' lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and a fair slice of international prestige in order to shape Iraq as a bulwark against neighboring Tehran's rigid religious rule and ambition for power in the region.
For all the movement, these are still the early days of Shahroudi's rise, so his succession gambit's impact on day-to-day politics in Iraq remains to be seen. But as an agent of influence for Tehran in Najaf, were his campaign to succeed, he would be a powerful advocate for clerical intervention. And any shift toward an Iranian-style theocracy would leave Washington facing yet another "How did that happen?" moment in Iraq.
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