Muqtada al-Sadr


Muqtada al-Sadr is an Iraqi cleric, politician and former militia leader. A leading Shia Muslim, he inherited the leadership of the Sadrist Movement from his father, and founded the now-dissolved Mahdi Army militia in 2003 that resisted the American occupation of Iraq.
He also founded the Promised Day Brigade insurgent group after the dissolution of the Mahdi Army; both were backed by Iran. In 2014, he founded the Peace Companies militia and serves as its current head. In 2018, he joined his Sadrist political party to the Saairun alliance, which won the highest number of seats in the 2018 and 2021 Iraqi parliamentary elections.

Titles

He belongs to the prominent al-Sadr family that hails from Jabal Amel in Lebanon, before later settling in Najaf. Sadr is the son of Muhammad al-Sadr, an Iraqi religious figure and politician who stood against Saddam Hussein, and the nephew of Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr. He is often styled with the honorific title Sayyid.
His formal religious standing within the Shi'i clerical hierarchy is comparatively mid-ranking. As a result of this, in 2008 Sadr claimed for himself neither the title of mujtahid nor the authority to issue any fatwas. In early 2008, he was reported to be studying to be an ayatollah, something that would greatly improve his religious standing.

Family

Muqtada al-Sadr is the fourth son of a famous Iraqi Shia cleric, the late Grand Ayatollah Muhammad al-Sadr. He is also the son-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Both were revered for their concern for the poor.
Muqtada is a citizen of Iraq; his great-grandfather is Ismail as-Sadr. Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, Muqtada al-Sadr's father, was a respected figure throughout the Shi'a Islamic world. He was murdered, along with two of his sons, allegedly by the government of Saddam Hussein. Muqtada's father-in-law was executed by the Iraqi authorities in 1980. Muqtada is a cousin of the disappeared Musa al-Sadr, the Iranian-Lebanese founder of the popular Amal Movement.
In 1994, Sadr married one of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr's daughters. As of 2008, he had no children.

Political positions

Muqtada al-Sadr gained popularity in Iraq following the toppling of the Saddam government by the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Sadr has on occasion stated that he wishes to create an "Islamic democracy".
Sadr commands strong support. After the fall of the Saddam government in 2003, Muqtada al-Sadr organized thousands of his supporters into a political movement, which includes a military wing formerly known as the Jaysh al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army. The name refers to the Mahdi, a long-since disappeared Imam who is believed by Shi'as to be due to reappear when the end of time approaches. This group periodically engaged in violent conflict with the United States and other Coalition forces, while the larger Sadrist movement has formed its own religious courts and organized social services, law enforcement and prisons in areas under its control. Western media often referred to Muqtada al-Sadr as an "anti-American" or "radical" cleric.
His strongest support came from the class of dispossessed Shi'a, like in the Sadr City area of Baghdad. Many Iraqi supporters see in him a symbol of resistance to foreign occupation. The Mahdi army was reported to have operated death squads during the Iraqi Civil War.
In a statement received by AFP on 15 February 2014, Sadr announced the closure of all offices, centers and associations affiliated with Al-Shaheed Al-Sadr, his father, inside and outside Iraq, and announced his non-intervention in all political affairs, adding that no bloc will represent the movement inside or outside the government or parliament. Several times he has called for all paramilitary groups recognised by the Iraqi state to be dissolved after the complete defeat of ISIL and that all foreign forces then leave Iraqi territory. He surprised many when he visited the crown princes of both Saudi Arabia, for the first time in 11 years, and the United Arab Emirates in 2017 and earlier and was criticized in some Iranian circles. In April 2017, he distinguished himself from other Iraqi Shiite leaders in calling on Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and save the country from more bloodshed. Sadr's efforts to strengthen relations between Saudi Arabia and Iraq mirror those of former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
Muqtada is widely suspected of ordering numerous assassinations against high-ranking Shi'ite clergy, including a 2003 bombing of the house of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Saeed al-Hakim, and the 10 April 2003 murder of Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Majid al-Khoei at a mosque in Najaf. On 13 October 2003, fighting broke out in Karbala, when al-Sadr's men attacked supporters of moderate Shi'ite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani near the Imam Hussein shrine.

Opposition to US presence

2003

Shortly after the US-led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath regime, al-Sadr voiced opposition to the Coalition Provisional Authority. He subsequently stated that he had more legitimacy than the Coalition-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. He granted his first major Western television interview to Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, in which al-Sadr famously said "Saddam was the little serpent, but America is the big serpent."
In May 2003, al-Sadr issued a fatwa that became known as the al-Hawasim ''fatwa''. The fatwa allowed theft and racketeering on the condition that the perpetrators pay the requisite khums to Sadrist imams, saying that "looters could hold on to what they had appropriated so long as they made a donation of one-fifth of its value to their local Sadrist office." The fatwa alienated many older members of his father's movement, as well as mainstream Shiites, and the Shia establishment and property-owning classes from the Sadrists. However, the fatwa strengthened his popularity among the poorest members of society, notably in Sadr City. It has been claimed that the original fatwa was actually issued by Sadr's advisor Grand Ayatollah Kazem Husseini Haeri, and that al-Sadr was simply loyally issuing the same instruction.
Al-Sadr is suspected in US news media of having ordered the assassination of rival Shia leader Abdul-Majid al-Khoei in 2003, a charge he denies and which remains unproven.

2004

In his 2004 sermons and public interviews, al-Sadr repeatedly demanded an immediate withdrawal of all US-led coalition forces, all foreign troops under United Nations control, and the establishment of a new central Iraqi government, not connected to the Ba'ath party or the Allawi government.
In late March 2004, American authorities in Iraq shut down Sadr's newspaper al-Hawza on charges of inciting violence. Sadr's followers held demonstrations protesting the closure of the newspaper. On 4 April, fighting broke out in Najaf, Sadr City, and Basra. Sadr's Mahdi Army took over several points and attacked coalition soldiers, killing dozens of foreign soldiers, and taking many casualties of their own in the process. At the same time, Sunni rebels in the cities of Baghdad, Samarra, Ramadi, and, most notably, Fallujah, staged uprisings as well, causing the most serious challenge to American control of Iraq up to that time.
During the first siege of Fallujah in late March and April 2004, Muqtada's Sadrists sent aid convoys to the besieged Sunnis there.
Paul Bremer, then the US administrator in Iraq, declared on 5 April 2004 that al-Sadr was an outlaw and that uprisings by his followers would not be tolerated.
That day, al-Sadr called for a jihad against American forces. To do this he needed to gain temporary control of Al Kut, An Najaf and the suburb of Baghdad named after his grandfather, Sadr City. On the night of 8 April, his Mahdi Army dropped eight overspans and bridges around the Convoy Support Center Scania, thus severing northbound traffic into Baghdad. The next day his militia ambushed any and every convoy trying to get in or out of Baghdad International Airport, known to the soldiers as BIAP. This led to the worst convoy ambush of the war, the ambush of the 724th Transportation Company, which resulted in eight KBR drivers killed and three soldiers killed. One was Matt Maupin, who was initially listed as the first American soldier missing in action. These series of attacks demonstrated an unexpected level of sophistication in planning. The Mahdi Army knew it could not win a head on fight with the United States military coalition and it took full advantage of a major American vulnerability by attacking convoy trucks that supplied the troops. BIAP was where the newly arrived 1st Cavalry Division drew its supplies. The 1st Cavalry Division was replacing the 1st Armored Division in and around Baghdad. The 1st Armored Division had already been deployed to Iraq for a year. CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid decided to extend the Division beyond its 1-year deployment, for an additional 120 days, to use in the fight against the Mahdi Army. On 11 April, the Mahdi Army launched an attack on the southwest wall at BIAP behind which several hundred trucks parked. By the end of April, the American 1st Armored Division had suppressed the Mahdi Army's uprising but al Sadr had achieved his goal of making it a significant resistance force fighting against the U.S. led coalition forces occupying Iraq.

2005–2006

It is generally frowned upon in Iraq for clerics to actively participate in secular politics, and like the other leading religious figures, Muqtada al-Sadr did not run in the 2005 Iraqi elections. It is believed he implicitly backed the National Independent Cadres and Elites party that was closely linked with the Mahdi Army. Many of his supporters, however, backed the far more popular United Iraqi Alliance of Grand Ayatollah Sistani.
On 26 August 2005, an estimated 100,000 Iraqis marched in support of al-Sadr and his ideals.
On 25 March 2006, Sadr was in his home and escaped a mortar attack; this attack was disputed, as the ordnance landed more than 50 meters from his home.
Sadr's considerable leverage was apparent early in the week of 16 October 2006, when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the release of one of Sadr's senior aides. The aide had been arrested a day earlier by American troops on suspicion of participating in kidnappings and killings.