Al-Sadr’s new role against Sistani’s authority

While Senior Shi­ites Supreme-clerics still live in the old city near the shrine of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, the media ignored the sig­nif­i­cance of Muq­tada Al-Sadr’s move of chang­ing his father’s office from Al-Hannana neigh­bor­hood in the old-city to one of the mod­ern, lux­u­ri­ous neigh­bor­hood in Najaf, which reveals his new role in the Iraqi politics

In his return to Iraq, Al-Sadr knows that any announce­ment of a reli­gious degree he man­aged to obtain in Qom-Iran can be a great embar­rass­ment to the tra­di­tional reli­gious Supreme-Authority, led by Sistani.

The tra­di­tional reli­gious estab­lish­ment in Najaf fears that Al-Sadr as a polit­i­cal leader of a move­ment, such as the Sadrists, which he inher­ited from the legacy of his father Mohammed Sadiq Al-Sadr, is quite dif­fer­ent from Al-Sadr with a degree in jurispru­dence, which makes him a com­peti­tor to the Supreme-Authorities, espe­cially if he man­ages to obtain a Fatwa-license. In this case it will be a coup against the con­cepts of the reli­gious author­ity which is char­ac­ter­ized by sta­bil­ity, sus­tain­abil­ity and silent-activities shrouded in extreme secrecy.

Infor­ma­tion came from Najaf say that Sistani’s sup­port­ers ini­ti­ate extreme secu­rity around Sistani’s office for the fear of an assas­si­na­tion attempt, as part of the new equa­tion in Iraq.

There are also infor­ma­tion say that Arab coun­try advised Sis­tani to leave Iraq for a period of time because of his secu­rity [I guess it is Jor­dan].

While west­ern media con­cen­trated on the rea­sons behind Al-Sadr’s return to Iraq, Iraqi and Arab ana­lysts tried to pre­dict the answer to the ques­tion: What is Muq­tada Al-Sadr’s next move? And will he stay in Najaf in his new posi­tion or not?

The answer depends on the com­ing sce­nar­ios in the Iraqi con­flict system:

- The Iraqi – Iraqi con­flict: The most promi­nent exam­ple is the activ­i­ties of the Iraqi death squads, most Iraqis are still con­sider Mahdi Army led by Al-Sadr is responsible.

- Shi­ite – Shi­ite con­flict: An exam­ple is the gov­ern­ment forces of Al-Maliki attacked the Mahdi Army in the Basra.

- Shi­ite – reli­gious con­flicts: The cler­i­cal rule or as known in Ara­bic (Wilayat Al-Faqih) will be the main rea­son behind this conflict.

- The Iraqi — U.S. con­flict: The Amer­i­can forces tar­geted Al-Sadr in Najaf few years ago.

- Regional con­flicts between Tehran and Riyadh to the point of plac­ing their influ­ences in the Iraqi arena.

High­lights from Al-Sadr speech on Sat­ur­day, asks his fol­low­ers to give the cur­rent gov­ern­ment a chance and watch its actions, show that this is the calm before the real storm.