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Backgrounder: Muqtada al-Sadr

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Greg Bruno, Staff Writer

Updated: May 16, 2008

Introduction

Muqtada al-Sadr is a young, fiercely anti-American messianic cleric and the head of the Mahdi Army, an armed militia that has waged an intermittent insurgency against U.S. and Iraqi forces. Virtually unknown before the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003, Sadr has since emerged as one of the most important Shiite leaders in the country. Bolstered by a base of predominantly poor urban Shiites, Sadr has led a series of uprisings against U.S., Iraqi, and rival Shia forces. A series of violent clashes in Najaf, Basra, and Sadr City since 2004 depleted the cleric's forces, but experts say his influence as a military, political, and religious figure have climbed amid the U.S.-led occupation. In 2007 Sadr announced plans to attend seminary, and is believed to be in the Iranian city of Qom—raising questions about Tehran's influence on the cleric. Born in the early 1970s, Sadr is the son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a prominent cleric and early champion of Shiite social causes. Sadr City—a vast Baghdad slum of 2.5 million previously called Saddam City—was renamed for the senior Sadr after Saddam's fall.

A Cleric's Family Ties

Muqtada al-Sadr's familial lineage contributed to his meteoric rise in modern Iraqi politics. His father was among the most powerful Shiite clerics in Iraq in the late 1990s. One of his father's distant cousins, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, was also a leading Shiite activist (who, incidentally, was executed by Saddam Hussein's forces in 1980). Both men are credited with shaping contemporary Shiite thought and opposition to Baghdad-based regimes. According to a 2006 International Crisis Group (ICG) analysis, the theology and philosophies of both men "reflected dissatisfaction with the traditional role of religious scholars" (PDF), particularly their inability to participate in the political process.

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Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.