FEBRUARY 2004

``If you're suggesting, how would we feel about an Iranian type government with a few clerics running everything in the country, the answer is: That isn't going to happen.''  -- Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense

Ayatollah Al-Sistani, 72, is a grand ayatollah, the highest theological degree in the Shi’a sect, has made three pilgrimages to Mecca (hence the title “Haj”), and is a descendant of the Prophet, as indicated by the title “Al-Sayid” and the wearing of the black turban. 

Ayatollah Al-Sistani is the leading cleric of the An-Najaf school (“hawza”) of the late Grand Ayatollah Al-Sayid ‘Abd Al-Qasim Al-Khu’i and successor to late Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq Al-Sadr, who was killed by the regime in 1999.   Although born in Mashhad, Iran, he has lived, studied and taught in An-Najaf for almost half a century.

Educated in Qom, Iran as well as An-Najaf, Ayatollah Al-Sistani is highly regarded for his work on the role of religion in Muslim states.  He does not favor the establishment of an Islamic republic in Iraq. 

Al Sistani

Al Manar:

Al Sistani Maintains That The People Should Have A Role In Iraq’s Future

Some of the Governing Council members went to An Najaf recently to meet Ayatollah Al Sistani in order to hear for his opinion concerning the issue of how to handle whether or not elections should be held to elect those who would write the constitution. Al Sistani said that it is very important to let the people express their opinions and share in the transfer of the legislative power. Moufaq Al Rubai, a Council member, said that Al Sistani represents the consciousness of the Iraqi people. He added that there is an agreement with the Coalition to transfer power on the 1 July 2004 to the Iraqi people.

US baffled by Shia leader who refuses to cut a deal
By Andrew Cockburn
January 16, 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-965021,00.html
Defiant cleric continues to frustrate coalition efforts to handpick a new government               
           
PRESIDENT Bush is desperate to transfer power to an Iraqi government and start withdrawing troops before the presidential election in November. But whether he succeeds depends largely on a venerable, self-deprecating 75-year-old cleric who gives no interviews, never appears on television and has not left his spartan home in the backstreets of Najaf, central Iraq, since Saddam Hussein’s agents tried to kill him ten years ago.
 
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is the spiritual leader of Iraq’s 15 million Shia Muslims and wields an extraordinary moral authority over his flock. In recent months it has become increasingly clear that his veto of the US scheme to foist an unelected government of favoured allies on Iraq cannot be negotiated. Washington has already been forced to change its withdrawal plans twice in deference to his demands, but still he insists on direct elections.
 
The trouble with those, from the American point of view, is that they would not be able to control the outcome.

 
The US paid little attention, initially, to this reclusive septuagenarian, according to Hussain Shahristani, a nuclear scientist and confidante of the Ayatollah’s who was imprisoned for ten years for refusing to build Saddam’s bomb. “They just didn’t understand.”
 
But there were plenty of signs that this was a man to be reckoned with. For example, even as Saddam’s statues were toppling in Baghdad, the BBC World Service reported (erroneously) that Ayatollah al-Sistani’s modest house in Najaf was under threat from a hostile mob. The news spread like wildfire.
 
“I was sleeping in a village near Basra that night,” said the scientist. “Suddenly I saw the villagers grabbing guns and preparing to rush to Najaf, hundreds of miles away. ‘Sistani is under attack’, they told me. That was all they needed to know. The same thing happened all over Iraq.”
 
After the fall of Saddam, Ayatollah al-Sistani denounced looting, which rapidly died down in Shia towns and cities.
 
His representatives helped to organise local councils to enforce law and order and restore basic services. He issued a more controversial edict prohibiting lethal reprisals against former officials of the Baathist regime. “People even respected that, at least for a while,” one Shia politician said.
 
Such stature seems all the more remarkable given that the Ayatollah himself is not Iraqi but a native of Mashad in northeast Iran.
 
A prodigy from a religious family who began learning the Koran at the age of five, he has spent almost his entire life in the intellectually rigorous atmosphere of Shia scholastic institutions, first in Iran and then, from his early twenties, in Najaf, the centre of Shia learning for the past thousand years.
 
Promising scholars would be expected to master philosophy and jurisprudence, mostly through debate, and Ayatollah al-Sistani also pursued a keen interest in modern science. Years studying grammar and rhetoric are reflected in his elegantly pure classical Arabic, although he has never lost his thick Iranian accent.
 
Leaders in the Shia hierarchy emerge, in part, on their ability to gain a following by virtue of their pronouncements on questions of religious law. Ayatollah al-Sistani also enjoyed the powerful support of the widely revered Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei, his teacher and predecessor as supreme religious authority. He shared his mentor’s distaste for the political philosophy of Ayatollah Khomeini, who spent years of exile in Najaf before returning to Iran.
 
Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei died in 1992, and Ayatollah al-Sistani assumed responsibility for a flock devastated by Saddam’s bloody reprisals for the Shia uprising after the 1991 Gulf War. Taking a low profile, he eschewed politics but still attracted a large following, thanks to the popularity of his rulings on law and personal behaviour.
 
Combining high and low technology, his followers around the world would e-mail requests for rulings to an office in the Iranian city of Qom. Such queries were then printed out and smuggled across the border to the Ayatollah’s house in Najaf, and his answers smuggled back to Qom for posting on the Sistani.org website.
 
His moral authority among the poverty-stricken Shia masses was bolstered further by his generous distribution of financial contributions, while his own lifestyle remained rigorously austere. “You get just one glass of tea, and the mattresses you sit on are very thin,” said a recent visitor.
 
Ayatollah al-Sistani remained politically aloof during last year’s war, declining either to condemn or endorse the coalition’s presence in Iraq. But in June he dropped a bombshell, issuing a ruling that declared the American plan to have a new constitution written by an unelected committee unacceptable and demanding that any new constitution be written by an elected assembly.
 
Eventually persuaded that this edict might be serious, Paul Bremer, Iraq’s American administrator, requested a meeting with Ayatollah al-Sistani, which was refused.
 
Mr Bremer then requested that the Ayatollah nominate representatives to meet his officials to negotiate a compromise. “Mr Bremer, you are American. I am Iranian. I suggest we leave it to the Iraqis to devise their constitution,” the Ayatollah replied.


 
Subsequent US efforts to find a way to hand power to a malleable Iraqi government have elicited unwavering demands from Ayatollah al-Sistani for one man, one vote.
 
“The Americans still don’t understand Sistani,” said one observer. “They treat him like a standard politician — ‘What will it take to make a deal?’— whereas he’s more of a law professor than a politician.”
 
Frustrated by the obstacle of the venerable cleric, some among the Iraqi Governing Council spread the word that the Ayatollah’s stance was dictated by his dogged opposition to full rights for women, and to other human rights principles that Mr Bush has promised Iraq. Supporters dismiss this as a “blatant lie”.
 
It is clear that Ayatollah al-Sistani could seriously derail coalition ambitions for the region by calling on his followers to protest en masse.
 
Should the US authorities remain in any doubt about his ability to get results, they might consider his impact on Iraqi petrol queues. Fuel shortages have been exacerbated by black marketeers cornering supplies, leading to enormous queues at petrol stations.
 
Finally, Ayatollah al-Sistani issued a fatwa ( a religious ruling with serious consequences for non adherence - The Editor) against black market profiteering in petrol. The lines shrank by 75 per cent. It is an example President Bush would do well to remember.



  Forwarded by Raja Mattar
news-report@wiretapped.net

HISTORY OF THE SHRINE OF
IMAM ALI B. ABI TALIB, PEACE BE UPON HIM

The visit of Prophet Abraham and Isaac and Abraham's prediction and desire to buy the
Valley of Peace.

Those who have visited Najaf will remember vividly that to the north and east of the town there are acres of graves and myriads of domes of various colours and at various stages of disrepair. Whoever goes to Najaf will follow a road that approaches the town by a winding course through this vast cemetery. The Prophet Abraham had come to this place along with Isaac; there had been many earthquakes in the vicinity, but while Abraham remained there, there were no tremors. On the night, however, when Abraham and Isaac went to a different village, and sure enough Najaf was visited with another earthquake. When they returned, the people were most eager for them to make Najaf their permanent dwelling-place. Abraham agreed to do so on condition that they would sell him the valley behind the village for cultivation. Isaac protested and said that this land was neither fit for farming nor grazing, but Abraham insisted and assured him that the time would come when there would be a tomb there with a shrine, at which seventy thousand people would gain absolutely undisputed entrance to Paradise, and be able also to intercede for many others.¹

The valley that Abraham wanted to buy is called the Valley of Peace (Wadiu's-Salaam), and it is related on the authority of the fourth Imam, that Ali once said that this ValIey of Peace is part of Heaven and that there is not a single one of the believers in the world, whether he dies in the east or west, but his soul will come to this Paradise to rest.² "As there is nothing hidden in this world from my eyes," Ali went on to say, "I see all the believers seated - here in groups and talking with one another."

How Najaf was given its name is explained in the tradition. At first there was a mountain there, and when one of the sons of Noah refused to enter the Ark, he said that he would sit on this mountain until he would see where the water would come. A revelation came therefore to the mountain, "Do you undertake to protect this son of mine from punishment?" And all at once the mountain fell. to pieces and the son of Noah was drowned. In place of the mountain a large river appeared, but after a few years the river dried up, and the place was called Nay-Jaff, meaning, "the dried river."³

And so as per the prediction of Abraham, Imam Ali was buried here.

Ali is absent today from our midst only physically. His soul even to this day is the greatest spiritual resort everyone who seeks the help of God through his medium. Thousands and thousands of people call out to him in their difficulties, and the word "Ya Ali Madad", automatically comes to them. A famous prayer known as "NADEY ALI" (Call Ali) is recited wherever abound the lovers of Ali.

The Mausoleum

"The Mausoleum itself of Hazrat Ali at Najaf, is breathtaking. There is one large central dome which stands out of a square-shaped ornate structure at the two sides of which are two minarets. The predominant colour of'the exterior is gold, bright shining gold and the entire exterior of the mausoleum is inlaid with a mosaic pattern of light powder blue, white marble, gold again with an occasional splash of Middle East rust." So says D. F. Karaka after his visit to Najaf, and further adds, "I have sat and wondered at the marbled splendour of our Taj Mahal, the tomb which Shah Jahan built for his Empress Mumtaz Mahal, but despite its beauty, the Taj appears insipid in comparison with this splash of colour at Najaf. The tomb surpassed anything I have seen in gorgeous splendour. All the great kings of the world put together could not have a tomb as magnificent as this, for this is the tribute which kings and peasants have built together to enshrine the mortal remains of the great Ali."

Countless number of people from all over the world flock to his tomb day after day to pay their respects and to offer salutations and to pray to Allah seeking his intercession. And those who cannot afford to go there personally, are constantly praying to Allah to help them to visit the shrine of their Maula Ali, and when somebody goes on a pilgrimage to Najaf, they request him to offer salutations on their behalf, and to pray to God - for some particular favour - and to seek Imam Ali's intercession.

The deer hunting incident of Harun al-Rashid

"During the reigns of the Umayyad Caliphs his blessed resting-place could not be disclosed, and so it was also under the Abbasids until the reign of Harun al-Rashid. But in the year 175 A.H. (791 A.D.), Harun happened to go hunting in these parts, and the deer he was chasing took refuge on a small piece of raised ground. However much he asked his hunting dogs to capture the quarry, they refused to go near this spot. He urged his horse to this place, and the horse too refused to budge; and on this, awe took possession of the Caliph's heart, and he immediately started to make inquiries of the people of the neighbourhood, and they acquainted him with the fact that this was the grave of Imam Ali ibn Abu Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Holy Prophet. Harun ordered a tomb to be erected over the grave, and people soon began to settle down in its vicinity."⁴

Footnotes:

1. Majlisi op. cit. page 108.

2. Mailisi op. cit. Page 111.

3. Majlisi op. cit. page 111.

4. The Shrine of Ali at Najaf from "The shi'ite Religion" by Dwight M. Donaldson.

illustration, Koran in Washington University Library, obtained 1979