Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani: Iraq’s Last Great Cleric
It seems ironic that Iraq’s most senior religious leader is, in fact, not Iraqi at all. It seems strange that one of Iraq’s most vocal advocates for democratic elections is ineligible to vote. It seems odd that a man with millions of dollars at his disposal chooses instead to live the life of a commoner. His face is one of the most recognizable in Iraq though he refuses to have his picture taken. Thus is the way of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, an unorthodox orthodox and one of Iraq’s last great clerics.
Early Life
Nestled in Iran’s eastern corner, not far from the border of what is today Turkmenistan, is the town of Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran. Mashhad has long held a religious significance as it is where Ali ibn Musa al-Rida, Shiite Islam’s Eighth Imam, is buried. Since his death in 818, al-Rida’s mausoleum has attracted millions of worshippers from across the Islamic world.
It was in this city that Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani was born in August of 1930.
Sistani’s spiritual roots run deep in his religiously-rich family. Named in honor of his grandfather, who was a revered religious scholar himself, Sistani seemed destined to one day follow in the clerical footsteps of his forefathers.
Sistani’s religious indoctrination began at the age of five when he began studying the Koran in his hometown before eventually moving onto the sacred city of Qom and finally to the center of Shiite Islam – Najaf, Iraq. He achieved the status of marja (i.e. grand ayatollah) in 1960, a feat all but unheard of for a student of his young age at the time.
The position of marja granted Sistani the authority to practice ijtihad – independently interpreting Islamic law and providing “guidance to Shiites on day-to-day matters.”
While studying in the ancient seminaries of Najaf Sistani became acquaintances with fellow Iranian Ruhollah Khomeini, a then-burgeoning cleric whose stern scowl continues to usher back bitter feelings with many Americans to this day.
The two, connected by religion and nationality, were polar opposites when it came to the role of clerics in government.
Unlike his more charismatic counterpart, Sistani ardently adheres to the “quietism” school of theology which urges Shiite clerics to stay clear of politics and political influence. Khomeini, on the other hand, was a fervent believer in “absolute” velayat al-faqih (“rule of the jurisprudent”), a theocratic belief largely developed and popularized by Khomeini himself. Suffice to say the two senior clerics differed mightily on this key issue as well as others and the two, “by all accounts … were never friends.”
Khomeini would go on to become one of the most recognizable faces of the later 20th century as his revolution of 1979 deposed the secular and West-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and instituted a conservative theocracy in Iran.
While Sistani would never garner the worldwide fame and notoriety that his contemporary achieved, he too was in line for a weighty promotion.
Election to the Hawza
After the death of his former teacher and spiritual mentor, Grand Ayatollah Abul Qassim al-Khoei, in 1992, Sistani took over the Hawza – in effect becoming the dean of Najaf’s complex of religious institutions. Sistani was elected to the Hawza by a vote of his clerical peers, the traditional means of selecting the supreme leader.
His ascension to the top of Iraq’s Shiite hierarchy did not come without its detractors, chiefly Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr who also sought the weighty title after al-Khoei’s death. Rivalries between Sistani and the al-Sadr family would linger through the ensuing decades and continue to this day.
A popular cleric in his own right, al-Sadr chastised and at times openly mocked Sistani for being the leader of what he termed the Hawza al-Samita, or the “Silent Hawza.” Al-Sadr then proceeded to declare himself as the head of the separate Hawza al-Natiqa, or “Vocal Hawza.”
The division in the Hawza represented a wider schism in Shiite Islam with regards to the role of clerics in political affairs, a division exacerbated by the 1979 revolution in neighboring Iran.
Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr was a cleric molded in the form of Sistani’s old classmate and champion of the Iranian revolution Grand Ayatollah Khomeini. He appealed to the segment of Iraqi Shiite society that wanted more from their religious leader than simply spiritual guidance. Al-Sadr’s weekly Jumu’ah (“Friday”) sermons were filled with muffled condemnation of the Iraqi government and bellicose rhetoric of impending Shiite triumph.
Al-Sadr’s growing influence and increasingly anti-Baathist rhetoric eventually grew too much for Saddam Hussein to bear. Sadiq al-Sadr was gunned down along with two of his sons in February 1999 by members of the Mukhabarat, Saddam’s omnipresent security apparatus.
Following the assassination of Sadiq al-Sadr, Sistani went further underground. Isolated and at times placed under house arrest, Sistani largely reclined himself to his modest Najaf compound. In his own show of defiance Sistani, despite unveiled overtures, never once gave the slightest endorsement of Saddam’s regime as so many other senior clerics succumbed into doing.
A Wartime Ayatollah
Sistani has proven to be both a blessing as well as a burden for the U.S. in Iraq. Like so many other Iraqis, especially Shiites, Sistani welcomed the overthrow of Saddam in 2003. However, he quickly began to question the ultimate motivations and aspirations of America’s ongoing presence in Iraq. He has thwarted the plans of U.S. authorities on numerous occasions while also saved any chance for U.S. “success” in Iraq as he has helped pull the nation away from the brink of anarchy and all out civil war in some of its darkest moments over the course of the U.S.-led occupation.
Though he has stayed true to his “quietism” approach to politics, Sistani has nonetheless played an active role in Iraq’s burgeoning democracy.
Sistani shot down several initial U.S. plans for a postwar Iraqi government. To show his displeasure, Sistani’s coalition organized several mass demonstrations that brought millions of Iraqis into the streets in peaceful protest. The message was clear and the U.S. quickly reshuffled its postwar political strategy to appease several of Sistani’s demands.
When voting did take place Sistani ordered his followers to participate in the landmark elections, even going so far as calling it a “religious duty.” He went further, urging Iraqi women to vote regardless of if their husbands or brothers disapproved. While that statement may not seem like much in secular America, it is nothing short of remarkable in Iraq’s conservative Islamic society.
The grand ayatollah has also played the role of referee at times, attempting to broker peace amidst Iraq’s kaleidoscope of violence.
Sistani was vital in brokering a peace deal of sorts between maverick cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (the son of Sistani’s onetime detractor Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr) and U.S. forces in the summer of 2004. Sistani, at the time recovering in London after treatment for a heart condition – the first time he had even left Najaf in over a dozen years – rushed back to southern Iraq and traveled towards Najaf in a “peace convoy” to urge a halt to the pitched violence. Within a day of his arrival, al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army fighters agreed to lay down their weapons and American forces withdrew from the holy city.
He further urged restraint when, in February 2006, Sunni militants linked to al-Qaida bombed the al-Askiriya Shrine shattering the mosque’s iconic golden dome. The shrine contains the tombs of Shiite Islam’s tenth and eleventh saints – Imam Ali al-Hadi and Imam Hasan al-Askari – and is generally revered as one of the faiths holiest sites.
Sistani has had dozens of top aides assassinated since the onset of the war. He has also been the target of several attempts on his own life and from every conceivable angle imaginable – everybody from Sunni Takfiris (former al-Qaida in Iraq front man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi often referred to Sistani as the “devil” in audio speeches and communiqués) to a Shiite messianic, doomsday cult. Each and every time Sistani has urged calm and ordered his followers against any form of retribution.
More than anything he has been a consistent source of calm and moderation in a war-torn nation where revenge and radicalism so often rule the day.
Practicing What He Preaches
Part of Sistani’s lore comes from his remarkably ascetic lifestyle.
Sistani is said to eat a peasant diet of yogurt and rice. His humble Najaf house is furnished with aging furniture while Sistani clothes himself in inexpensive garments. Legend has it that Sistani consistently refuses his followers offers of a new air conditioner – a necessity in Iraq’s scorching summertime heat – instead urging his aides to donate the new unit to a local needy family. Another time an ill Sistani is rumored to have quipped at a well-meaning aide who brought him a glass of juice saying, “People are not finding … water and you’re bringing me juice? No.”
In late 2007 Sistani organized a reconciliation conference of some 200 Shiite and Sunni clerics from across Iraq in a bid to halt sectarian infighting. At the conference Sistani issued a fatwa (“religious edict”) ordering his majority Shiite followers to protect Iraq’s Sunni minority.
It was Sistani who put together a delegation of imams and sheiks, Shiite as well as Sunni, to visit the archbishop of the northern city of Kirkuk – a city that contains one of the largest populations of Iraq’s ever-dwindling Christian minority – to congratulate them on this past Christmas holiday.
If Iraq is to emerge from the nadir of bloodletting and destruction that has encompassed the Land of the Two Rivers in the half-decade since the deposition of Saddam Hussein and the Baath regime it will be due in large part to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani – one of the few people in Iraq today whose words wield more influence than any weapon.
Early Life
Nestled in Iran’s eastern corner, not far from the border of what is today Turkmenistan, is the town of Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran. Mashhad has long held a religious significance as it is where Ali ibn Musa al-Rida, Shiite Islam’s Eighth Imam, is buried. Since his death in 818, al-Rida’s mausoleum has attracted millions of worshippers from across the Islamic world.
It was in this city that Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani was born in August of 1930.
Sistani’s spiritual roots run deep in his religiously-rich family. Named in honor of his grandfather, who was a revered religious scholar himself, Sistani seemed destined to one day follow in the clerical footsteps of his forefathers.
Sistani’s religious indoctrination began at the age of five when he began studying the Koran in his hometown before eventually moving onto the sacred city of Qom and finally to the center of Shiite Islam – Najaf, Iraq. He achieved the status of marja (i.e. grand ayatollah) in 1960, a feat all but unheard of for a student of his young age at the time.
The position of marja granted Sistani the authority to practice ijtihad – independently interpreting Islamic law and providing “guidance to Shiites on day-to-day matters.”
While studying in the ancient seminaries of Najaf Sistani became acquaintances with fellow Iranian Ruhollah Khomeini, a then-burgeoning cleric whose stern scowl continues to usher back bitter feelings with many Americans to this day.
The two, connected by religion and nationality, were polar opposites when it came to the role of clerics in government.
Unlike his more charismatic counterpart, Sistani ardently adheres to the “quietism” school of theology which urges Shiite clerics to stay clear of politics and political influence. Khomeini, on the other hand, was a fervent believer in “absolute” velayat al-faqih (“rule of the jurisprudent”), a theocratic belief largely developed and popularized by Khomeini himself. Suffice to say the two senior clerics differed mightily on this key issue as well as others and the two, “by all accounts … were never friends.”
Khomeini would go on to become one of the most recognizable faces of the later 20th century as his revolution of 1979 deposed the secular and West-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and instituted a conservative theocracy in Iran.
While Sistani would never garner the worldwide fame and notoriety that his contemporary achieved, he too was in line for a weighty promotion.
Election to the Hawza
After the death of his former teacher and spiritual mentor, Grand Ayatollah Abul Qassim al-Khoei, in 1992, Sistani took over the Hawza – in effect becoming the dean of Najaf’s complex of religious institutions. Sistani was elected to the Hawza by a vote of his clerical peers, the traditional means of selecting the supreme leader.
His ascension to the top of Iraq’s Shiite hierarchy did not come without its detractors, chiefly Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr who also sought the weighty title after al-Khoei’s death. Rivalries between Sistani and the al-Sadr family would linger through the ensuing decades and continue to this day.
A popular cleric in his own right, al-Sadr chastised and at times openly mocked Sistani for being the leader of what he termed the Hawza al-Samita, or the “Silent Hawza.” Al-Sadr then proceeded to declare himself as the head of the separate Hawza al-Natiqa, or “Vocal Hawza.”
The division in the Hawza represented a wider schism in Shiite Islam with regards to the role of clerics in political affairs, a division exacerbated by the 1979 revolution in neighboring Iran.
Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr was a cleric molded in the form of Sistani’s old classmate and champion of the Iranian revolution Grand Ayatollah Khomeini. He appealed to the segment of Iraqi Shiite society that wanted more from their religious leader than simply spiritual guidance. Al-Sadr’s weekly Jumu’ah (“Friday”) sermons were filled with muffled condemnation of the Iraqi government and bellicose rhetoric of impending Shiite triumph.
Al-Sadr’s growing influence and increasingly anti-Baathist rhetoric eventually grew too much for Saddam Hussein to bear. Sadiq al-Sadr was gunned down along with two of his sons in February 1999 by members of the Mukhabarat, Saddam’s omnipresent security apparatus.
Following the assassination of Sadiq al-Sadr, Sistani went further underground. Isolated and at times placed under house arrest, Sistani largely reclined himself to his modest Najaf compound. In his own show of defiance Sistani, despite unveiled overtures, never once gave the slightest endorsement of Saddam’s regime as so many other senior clerics succumbed into doing.
A Wartime Ayatollah
Sistani has proven to be both a blessing as well as a burden for the U.S. in Iraq. Like so many other Iraqis, especially Shiites, Sistani welcomed the overthrow of Saddam in 2003. However, he quickly began to question the ultimate motivations and aspirations of America’s ongoing presence in Iraq. He has thwarted the plans of U.S. authorities on numerous occasions while also saved any chance for U.S. “success” in Iraq as he has helped pull the nation away from the brink of anarchy and all out civil war in some of its darkest moments over the course of the U.S.-led occupation.
Though he has stayed true to his “quietism” approach to politics, Sistani has nonetheless played an active role in Iraq’s burgeoning democracy.
Sistani shot down several initial U.S. plans for a postwar Iraqi government. To show his displeasure, Sistani’s coalition organized several mass demonstrations that brought millions of Iraqis into the streets in peaceful protest. The message was clear and the U.S. quickly reshuffled its postwar political strategy to appease several of Sistani’s demands.
When voting did take place Sistani ordered his followers to participate in the landmark elections, even going so far as calling it a “religious duty.” He went further, urging Iraqi women to vote regardless of if their husbands or brothers disapproved. While that statement may not seem like much in secular America, it is nothing short of remarkable in Iraq’s conservative Islamic society.
The grand ayatollah has also played the role of referee at times, attempting to broker peace amidst Iraq’s kaleidoscope of violence.
Sistani was vital in brokering a peace deal of sorts between maverick cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (the son of Sistani’s onetime detractor Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr) and U.S. forces in the summer of 2004. Sistani, at the time recovering in London after treatment for a heart condition – the first time he had even left Najaf in over a dozen years – rushed back to southern Iraq and traveled towards Najaf in a “peace convoy” to urge a halt to the pitched violence. Within a day of his arrival, al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army fighters agreed to lay down their weapons and American forces withdrew from the holy city.
He further urged restraint when, in February 2006, Sunni militants linked to al-Qaida bombed the al-Askiriya Shrine shattering the mosque’s iconic golden dome. The shrine contains the tombs of Shiite Islam’s tenth and eleventh saints – Imam Ali al-Hadi and Imam Hasan al-Askari – and is generally revered as one of the faiths holiest sites.
Sistani has had dozens of top aides assassinated since the onset of the war. He has also been the target of several attempts on his own life and from every conceivable angle imaginable – everybody from Sunni Takfiris (former al-Qaida in Iraq front man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi often referred to Sistani as the “devil” in audio speeches and communiqués) to a Shiite messianic, doomsday cult. Each and every time Sistani has urged calm and ordered his followers against any form of retribution.
More than anything he has been a consistent source of calm and moderation in a war-torn nation where revenge and radicalism so often rule the day.
Practicing What He Preaches
Part of Sistani’s lore comes from his remarkably ascetic lifestyle.
Sistani is said to eat a peasant diet of yogurt and rice. His humble Najaf house is furnished with aging furniture while Sistani clothes himself in inexpensive garments. Legend has it that Sistani consistently refuses his followers offers of a new air conditioner – a necessity in Iraq’s scorching summertime heat – instead urging his aides to donate the new unit to a local needy family. Another time an ill Sistani is rumored to have quipped at a well-meaning aide who brought him a glass of juice saying, “People are not finding … water and you’re bringing me juice? No.”
In late 2007 Sistani organized a reconciliation conference of some 200 Shiite and Sunni clerics from across Iraq in a bid to halt sectarian infighting. At the conference Sistani issued a fatwa (“religious edict”) ordering his majority Shiite followers to protect Iraq’s Sunni minority.
It was Sistani who put together a delegation of imams and sheiks, Shiite as well as Sunni, to visit the archbishop of the northern city of Kirkuk – a city that contains one of the largest populations of Iraq’s ever-dwindling Christian minority – to congratulate them on this past Christmas holiday.
If Iraq is to emerge from the nadir of bloodletting and destruction that has encompassed the Land of the Two Rivers in the half-decade since the deposition of Saddam Hussein and the Baath regime it will be due in large part to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani – one of the few people in Iraq today whose words wield more influence than any weapon.
posted by Todd @ 11:53 PM
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