AS AYATOLLAH HAKIM PREPARE HIS RETURN, IRAQI CLERICS FAVOUR SECULARISM
By Safa Haeri, IPS Editor
PARIS, 8
May (IPS) As Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, the 63 years old leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI) is preparing to leave for his hometown of Najaf, a double conflict is surfacing, pitting senior Iraqi and Iranian Shi’ite leaders and their respective rival religious circles (hawzeh) of Qom in Iran and Najaf in Iraq against each other.
Hundreds of Iraqi clerics who had escaped to Iran the inferno Saddam Hoseyn has created for the Shi’as have already left the Iranian religious of Qom, where they were teaching and learning, for their native Iraq, most of them assuring that the first think they would do is not to emulate the Iranian experience of an Islamist theocracy.
"When I first arrived here some 15 years ago, the mosques were well attended by the faithful, many of them young ones. Now, as I prepare to leave Iran, the places are empty, the mullahs get cursed by ordinary people and Islam is insulted randomly, seen as the main responsible for their miseries, like poverty, injustice, unemployment, prostitution and corruption among high-level ayatollahs", Hojjatoleslam Fazel Mousavi (certainly a nickname) told Iran Press Service, speaking on the phone from Qom.
Like most of the 3.000 Iraqi talabeh (students in Islamic theology) who had flocked in this dry, dusty and ugly city, Mr. Mousavi had been an ardent supporter of theories developed by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution of 1979 and founder of the present day Islamic Republic of Iran.
"When starting my studies in Najaf, we were told by our ulemas that Islam has the answer for everything. Then Islam came to power in Iran and we were proud that the justice of Ali (Shi’as first Emam) is already in action and soon Iran would become a "Ferdaus" (paradise)".
"But the last fifteen years I spent in Iran, ruled by a group of ayatollahs, has proved that all we had learned was nonsense, at least for the political side of it, for the simple reason that the clergy is not trained for today's world complicated political, social and economic issues. The greatest lessen we learned here is that our ulemas (doctors in Islam theology) in Najaf are right when they insist that religion, because it is so sacred, is a private matter between God and individuals and must not be mixed with politics, which is so dirty", he added.
Asked if he is happy to return to Najaf, he said without hesitation: "It is like going to teach and study at Cambridge after exercising in a small university", he said, comparing Najaf, which has a history of 1000 years, with Qom, which was projected into predominance after the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the "slaughter" of the Shi’as in Iraq.
The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hoseyn, dominated by the Sunni Muslims, executed 750,000 people since 1980, most of them Kurds and Shi’a, before being toppled last month by the American-led Coalition forces, according to informed Iraqi sources.
Dr. Hadi Ansari, the son of eminent cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Ansari Qomi, who was himself killed on Saddam's order, told a news conference in Qom that Iraqi resistance groups had information that Saddam's henchmen had killed 182 senior clerics, some of them sources of emulation, in Najaf, of whom 138 were Iranians, the official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted him as having said.
He said the figure could double once the
Iraqi groups that are collecting and classifying documents relating to these martyrs would have completed their work."It is correct that our religion has rigid foundations, imposing on our marja’ (sources of emulation, or Grand Ayatollahs) to emulate our prophet, who was both a political and religious leader. But I would say the clerics must chose. If they want to play politics, it is better they take off their aba and ammameh (the robe and the turban)", Hojjatoleslam Fazel said.
Political analysts and clerics agree that now that the Shi’a, who form the majority in Iraq, have recovered their freedom, Najaf would "very quickly" return to its past glory as the main spiritual and teaching centre for students in Shi’ism, which, with more than 200 followers, is Islam’s second largest branch after Sunni, with some billion faithful worldwide.
Also contrary to Qom, known as the "cradle" of militant Shi’a, Najaf has always been teaching a moderate line, accommodating secular systems.
When the Coalition attacked Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest religious authority for Arab Shi’as, called on the Iraqis not to take part in the war.
But not all the Iraqi clerics packing for their return, share Mr. Fazel’s view.
"If the Islamic Republic (of Iran) faces difficulties, it is because the whole world, including Muslim nations, are against it. But if SAIRI can produce a similar system in Baghdad, together, with all our wealth, we can become a model of justice, prosperity and strength", a cleric close to the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution for Iraq said, refusing to identify himself.
"The marja’s we have in Najaf have had no occasion to occupy political position, not that they are favouring separation of religion from politics (secularism). We have political laws in our religion that requires that our sources of emulation be also doctor in politics as well", Hojjatoleslam Mohsen Hakim, a nephew of Ayatollah Baqer Hakim pointed out.
"His eminency Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim is both a source of emulation and an expert in politics", the cleric told the Persian service of the BBC, confirming that his uncle has decided to give up the leadership of the SAIRI to instead concentrating on his role as the "political and spiritual leader" of the Iraqi Shi’a community.
So far, Ayatollah al-Hakim has refrained of any direct comment on the presence of Coalition except warnings that "the soonest they leave Iraq the better" but other members of the Organisation have been more vocal, indicating that "Iraqi people would not accept any foreign-imposed government".
Sources predicts that with the return of Mr. Al-Hakim, a fight for the supreme leadership of the Iraqi Shi’a would start between the moderates, led by Sistani and Hakim, who has firm backing from the ruling Iranian ayatollahs.
Hence, American suspicions about SAIRI and above all, the 15.000 to 30.000 strong men Badr Brigade, the military wing of the Organisation, well trained and equipped by the Revolutionary Guards.
The Brigade, which developed in to a division and then into a corp, divided into Infantry, Armoured, Artillery, Anti aircraft and commandos units, consists of thousands of fighters recruited from Iraqi refugees in Iran, Iraqi migrants and Iraqi military officers as well as soldiers from Iraqi army who defected during Iran- Iraq war. A new wave of fighters arrived in Iran after the popular uprising of March 1991, which was crushed by Saddam's regime.
Under the command of Hojjatoleslam Abdolaziz al-Hakim, the younger brother of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer who is already in Baghdad taking an active part in a six-members provisory council designated to fill the political vacuum left by the fall of the former dictator and his ruling Ba’th Party under the supervision of the Americans, most of the Brigade’s force have already returned to Iraq, less of their heavy arms.
Both SAIRI and the Badr have umbilical links with Tehran and the Revolutionary Guards, informed Iranian and Iraqi sources admits.
"Iranian ayatollahs look to the SAIRI and its armed Badr branch as an important bargaining chips in thwarting mounting American pressures against their regime", an Iranian scholar told IPS, referring to Washington’s accusations that Iran is sowing confusion and spreading violence in Iraq.
U.S. concerns have been heightened by reports that officers of a special "Iraq Unit" incorporated into the Revolutionary Guard, who control the border crossings from Iran, command Badr, which has secret cells all over Iraq, which are involved in gathering information, media work and military activities.
Arrested twice in the 1970 by the Ba’athist regime, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer decided he was safer in exile in Iran, after Saddam ordered the assassination of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Sadr, -- a companion of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini and leader of the Shi’a, as well as his sister, Amineh Ben al Hoda.
In 1983, Iraqi security forces rounded up 125 members of Hakim's family, killing 25 of them. A further 18 of them who had disappeared without trace are now confirmed assassinated. Iraqi agents killed another brother, Mahdi al-Hakim, in Sudan in 1988.
Among those killed are
also three brothers of Iran's Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, reports said.Iranian
cabinet on Tuesday deplored the death and assassination of more than 180 Iraqi Shi’ite clerics by Saddam Hoseyn’s Ba’athi regime, calling it as an "unprecedented" instance of "heinous crimes" in the history of undemocratic governments. IRAQI CLERGY RETURN 8503