PAT ROBERTSON IN A TURBAN:

Iraqi Cleric Takes Center Stage: Having guided a Shiite alliance to likely victory, Grand Ayatollah Sistani is in a position to mold the new government and the constitution. (Alissa J. Rubin, February 6, 2005, LA Times)

Sistani's associates say he has prepared for this moment for years. Although he has lived a cloistered life in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, immersed in religious study, he is said to be passionately interested in politics and can converse in depth about different systems of government.

From his office on a narrow street in Najaf's Old City where the small brick houses are jammed together, Sistani has a far-reaching network of representatives that stretches from Pakistan to Lebanon to Britain.

He keeps in constant touch with them through e-mail as well as by telephone. His high-speed Internet connection is similar to the kind used by large corporations and governments, according to an Iraqi government official familiar with the system. His staff uses it to research any subject in which the cleric takes an interest.

His son Mohammed Ridha is one of his chief assistants and is deeply involved in politics. Mohammed Jawad, his other son, is a clerical scholar.

"Sayyid Sistani knows about the French Revolution, the American Revolution. He had read about the election in East Timor," Shahristani, the nuclear scientist, said. "I remember when I went to see him, I joked and said how impressed I was at how much he had read."

According to Shahristani, Sistani replied: "We read all your books. You don't read all your books, but we have the time — we are just sitting here" and gestured to the spare reception room where the cleric greets visitors, who sit as he does, on flat floor cushions.

A cleric friend said Sistani had readied himself to wrestle with constitutional principles. "He is knowledgeable about the American, French and German constitutions and the British unwritten constitution," said Sheik Jalaludin Saghir, the chief cleric at the Bratha mosque in Baghdad, one of the city's largest Shiite mosques.

But it is unclear exactly what kind of government Sistani wants. Because he does not give interviews to Western reporters, the only way to gauge his leanings is to talk to Shiite clerics and politicians who have met with him and to read his copious writings.

Sistani has explicitly distanced himself from Iran — he refused to meet with a delegation from the Iranian Foreign Ministry who came to help resolve troubles with the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. The implication is that he wants to make it clear both to his Iraqi followers and to the Iranians that he will not take orders from his Persian neighbors.

He also doesn't support the Iranian theocracy that is based on the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's doctrine of velayat-e-faqih, or rule of religious jurists.

But Sistani, who was born in the Iranian city of Mashad, a pilgrimage center, does envision a powerful role for clerics in the new Iraq.

Secular members of the Alliance slate say Sistani does not plan to allow clerics to serve in government, but several associates of Sistani, including Saghir, say that there is no hard-and-fast rule.

In fact, although Sistani was reluctant to have clerics run for the transitional national assembly, he bent that rule because he wanted to be sure that people he trusted would be in a position to influence the writing of the constitution, Shahristani said.

The areas in the constitution that matter to Sistani concern the role of Islam in Iraq, Saghir said. "The main religion of Iraq is Islam, and laws should not run counter to Islamic teachings," he said.

Sistani expects Islamic Sharia law to be enforced in certain areas, including domestic matters that would have considerable impact on women, possibly reducing their rights compared with what they would have under a secular system.

Also, for instance, the sale of alcohol probably would be banned, Saghir said. That would be a turnaround for Iraq, which was a secular state under Hussein, where Christians sold alcohol and many Muslims drank despite Koranic prohibitions.

"Sistani's position is analogous to that of the Christian Coalition in American politics. He wants civil law and policy to be in conformance with Islamic law and principle as far as possible," said Juan R. I. Cole, associate chair of the history department at the University of Michigan.

"He will use fatwas and persuasion to try to influence parliamentary and political debate on issues that are important to him," Cole said.

The ascendancy of the Shiites in Iraq will change the sectarian balance of power in a region where Sunni Arabs dominate the political scene. For Shiites to come to power in Iraq, the heart of the Arab world, has tremendous symbolic significance and is certain to reverberate through Shiite communities in the region.

"Shiite ascendancy in Iraq is a huge development for the Arab world," Cole said. "Shiites in Saudi Arabia have been persecuted. Shiites in Iraq were marginalized. Shiites in Lebanon were the poorest and least powerful group. Shiites in Bahrain, despite being a majority, were marginalized.

"The Shiite-dominated government in Iraq will be a champion of Arab Shiite rights. If the Shiites in Saudi Arabia are repressed, the prime minister of Iraq will fly from Baghdad to Riyadh to complain."

So why did Mr. Cole oppose the liberation of the Shi'ites in Iraq and by extension throughout the Middle East?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 7, 2005 07:59 AM