IRAQ: Muqtada Sadr hitting the books?
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Iraq’s most powerful guy claims he’s stepping back from politics, at least for now.
Muqtada Sadr, the guerrilla leader turned political party boss, is trying once again to reinvent himself, this time as a serious religious cleric.
He says he’s removing himself from day-to-day politics and devoting himself to ‘scholarly’ pursuits for a while. The radical cleric who fought Americans in 2004 issued a lengthy and rambling statement the other day to his supporters. He said he had delegated day-to-day affairs of his organization to a committee to oversee offices and community centers.
The thirtysomething cleric suggested that he wanted to study in order to bolster his religious credentials. He says pursuing a spiritual path will hone his leadership skills in the long run:
The one in charge needs scholarly perfection, and as I gave you, or let’s say, gave society a large share of my life until my body weakened, my illness increased and my worry augmented. Now I have a right. I want to be a perfected scholar, wise by studying. Perfectionism won’t happen without solitude for a certain amount of time to worship God and obey him. The closer a leader is to God, the more closer his subjects and vice versa.
The letter was in supposed response to a request from a group of supporters wondering why he had been absent from the political scene. But it could just be another one of his famous tactical feints. The once-revered Sadr movement has been sullied by its entry into politics, and it’s now widely viewed as just another corrupt and brutal Iraqi patronage machine.
The statement, issued very late Thursday night, contains no word on whether he is continuing his studies in his hometown of Najaf, Iraq, or the Iranian seminary city of Qom, where many Shiite clerics go to beef up their resumes.
Sadr hails from a famous and popular religious clan, and studying is something his dad, a famous cleric assassinated by Saddam Hussein in 1999, wanted for him, he said. Sadr suggests that the only reason he diverted from this plan in the first place was the continuing U.S.-led occupation.
Still, he writes that though most of his supporters ‘haven’t let him down, either in war or in peace, neither in distress nor in prosperity,’ the world of politics has disappointed him:
The Iraq arena now belongs to the merely earthly realm. It’s in discord. I came to see that I should keep my distance from it until that the interest requires me to return. According to my understanding indulging in ... politics is a way that keeps one distant from God.
He acknowledges that he has been somewhat disappointed by the conflicts between his followers who have ‘drifted away’ from the orders of the clergy and that it ‘indulged in the valleys of politics ... and the parties.’
— Borzou Daragahi and Saif Hameed in Baghdad