Imam Muqtada Al-Sadr threatens to launch Intifada
Baghdad (AsiaNews) The press office of the young Shiite leader, Muqtada Al-Sadr, issued a threat today, aimed explicitly at foreign troops in Iraq.
Muqtada al-Sadr is the son of Ayatollah Mohamed Sadeq Al Sadr, who was assassinated 5 years ago by the former Iraqi government.
The statement read: "We warn and advise everyone that the Iraqi people, under a veil of apathy, are ready and waiting and are capable of crushing their enemies. The memories of the Revolution in the 1920s (against British colonialism) and the Intifada Sha'abaniya (Shiite revolt in 1991 in the south during the Islamic month of Sha'aban and crushed by Sadaam Hussein) are still fresh in their minds."
The 24 year-old Imam Al-Sadr, a fierce enemy of Christians, Israel and the West, is considered the shadiest person of the post-Saddam Hussein era. He is the head of an anonymous movement, generically called the Sadr Front, and has armed military units (the Al-Mahdi army) and has set up headquarters in the Baghdad neighborhood of Al-Thawra.
The movemnent's political agenda is one of the most clearly fundamentalist programs in Iraq. Its program is against secularity and western culture. Unlike his greatest rival, Ayatollah Al-Sistani, Imam Sadr has never uttered the word "democracy" during his sermons nor mentioned any future possibility of living together with other ethnic and religious minority communities in Iraq.
Last Jan. 29 the Provisional Governing Council (PGC) in Iraq launched an investigation on the existence of a private jail run by Al-Sadr, where he supposedly has detained persons based on their violating the Shariah (Islamic law). The investigation has reached no conclusion so far.
Several months ago Al-Sadr visited Iran where he was warmly received by the Ayatollah Khamenei and Hashemi Rafsanjani. According to Arab sources, Khamenei probably compared Al Sadr to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, when wishing him luck in kicking out American forces in Iraq "like the Hezbollah did to Israel in Lebanon".
Al-Sadr's daily threats are in response to a statement made by civil governor Paul Bremer. During a Feb 15 visit to Karbala'a (Shiite holy city 110 km south of Baghdad) Bremer said hid not "intend on accepting any constitution in which Islam was the main source of legislation, as some PGC members have requested."
Al-Sadr said in his statement, "these words are a sign of (their) strong hatred for Islam and attempt to put a check on the hopes of many Iraqis for a Islam-based constitution." He concluded stressing that the "Iraqi people are of an Islamic nature" even if many of them "don't follow the teachings of religion in their lifestyles."
The tendency to Islamicize Iraqi society is found throughout the Shiite world, Despite the fact that various Shiite factions fight among themselves, this one point they in which they are all in agreement.
Just yesterday in Najaf (160 km south of Baghdad) Sadr Addin Al-Kanbagi, representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said: "Authority today lays in the hands of the people. This means that we are not forced to adopt ideas brought here from abroad, from counties thousands of kilometers away."
Even Abdel-Mahdi Al-karbala'i, Ayatollah Al-Sistani's right hand man, commented on Bremer's position stating: "Islam is the basis for legislation. This is a natural right, since (in Iraq) we are composed of a Muslim majority versus a handful of a few other religions." (PB)
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