Iraq, once secular, now dominated by religious parties

Mar 19, 2008, 6:34 GMT

Cairo ­ A few days before the launch of the war on Iraq in March, 2003, pro-war policymakers in the United States were saying Iraqis would make better allies than Saudis because they were secular and overwhelmingly Shiite.

Iraqis 'don't bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory,' said the then US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz.

Five years on, Iraq's political landscape and public life have become dominated by religious parties, mostly Shiite.

'Conditions in Iraq in the years leading up to the war led to the rise of religious parties after the war,' says Hamid Fadil, a political scientist at Baghdad University.

Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, religious parties were outlawed and religious figures persecuted, Fadil says.

In his later years, Saddam encouraged religion - the Sunni version - to serve his authoritarian purposes.

Shiites who prayed, however, were seen by the regime as a threat to his authority. This is why they were the most welcoming of the invading troops, analysts say. They could worship freely and openly for the first time.

'Hussayniyah (Shiite worshipping places) used to be filled with people right after the war,' recalls Mohammed, a 35-year-old non- religious Shiite.

Religious leaders appealed to our shared painful past experience, he says.

In the two weeks following the collapse of the regime, those leaders jumped in to fill the political vacuum, with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani becoming the country's most influential figure.

Despite his indirect yet decisive political role, al-Sistani belongs to the traditional Shiite school of thought, known as quietism, which favours a separation of religion and politics.

Al-Sistani envisages a state that is both Islamic and democratic, as paradoxical as that may seem.

The 79-year-old recluse does not support violent confrontation with the US, but his views have clashed with US authorities in Iraq on several occasions. The US accepted his views that the framers of Iraq's constitution and members of its transitional government should be elected.

Under al-Sistani's stewardship, the United Iraqi Alliance - a coalition of mainly mainstream Shiite religious groups - won 48 per cent of the votes in the January 2005 election and 41 per cent in the December 2005 polls.

'For days before the election, I told my mother the advantages of voting for the secular Iraqi List. She promised to vote for its candidate,' recalls Mohammed.

'On election day, we both went to the poll station. I voted for the list and she came out to say she voted for the United Iraqi Alliance,' says Mohammed.

'She changed her mind about voting for the secular list as soon as she saw al-Sistani's poster hanging outside the polling station, which was in breach of election law.'

'Just the sight of al-Sistani in election posters rekindled many Shiites' deeply held loyalty for him,' says Mohammed.

US-backed secular parties were humiliatingly defeated. The victors of the alliance have led two successive coalition cabinets formed mainly along sectarian and ethnic lines. Sectarian-based politics now prevails.

One of the big surprises of the post-Saddam era has been the rise of the radical movement of fiery Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr organized poor Shiites, especially in the south and the slums of eastern Baghdad, home to two to three million people. Formerly known as Saddam City, it is now called Sadr City.

The al-Sadr movement has a militia, al-Mahdi Army, which fought fierce battles against US forces in 2004.

Though actively militating against the US presence in Iraq, the movement has been part of the US-sponsored political process. It took part in the election as part of the pro-US Shiite alliance. It had members in the cabinet until it withdrew them in 2007.

The al-Mahdi Army has been blamed for deadly attacks on Sunni Muslims, which decreased al-Sadr's move to freeze activities of his militia.

Wherever it became dominant, the al-Mahdi Army reportedly banned parties at colleges and imposed the wearing of the head scarf.

Hairdressers' shops have been closed in many areas and smokers have had their fingers broken if caught, said Mohammed, explaining the excesses of the al-Mahdi Army in enforcing al-Sadr's vision of an Islamic state.

'Religious parties dominated the political arena thanks to their militias, which backed them against very weak state bodies,' Member of Parliament (MP) Wail Abdel-Latif says.

'These parties have failed miserably in running the country and building a strong state,' Abdel Latif says.