Al Haeri Breaks With Sadr Informed

Al-Haeri Breaks with Sadr

An informed reader writes from London:

Sayyid Muqtada Al-Sadr has now been officially renounced by Ayatullah Kadhim Al-Haeri. He has been stripped of his “wukala”(representation) and also denied the right of accepting and using any religious dues on behalf of his father as well as Ayatullah Haeri. This is a

big turnaround, although it has been sometime coming. You can read it on Ayatullah Haeri’s official site (https://www.alhaeri.org/iraq.html) where there are a few questions posted regarding Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Iraq situation in general. It is also to be noted on that page that Ayatullah Haeri remarks that Shaykh Muhammad Al-Yaqoobi is not a Mujtahid (Yaqoobi claims he is a Mujtahid and a Marji’) and is not to be followed. This is quite a big move, since it now leaves Ayatullah Haeri without much support among the grass-root followers from the Sadr movement, be it from Muqtada Al-Sadr’s group or that of Shaykh Yaqoobi.

Secondly, there are strong rumours circulating around the streets of Najaf that Muqtada Al-Sadr has had a fallout with some of his top lieutenants and officials from the Sayyid Al-Shaheed office over his recent moves to make some deals and political maneouvering with Iyad Allawi and the new Iraqi government. My relatives in Najaf told me over the phone that it seems he has acted without consultation over a few issues and has been trying to

improve his relations with the interim government. Another rumour is that he was actually attacked by one of his aides, but this seems rather unlikely. The only source of this I could find was on (

https://www.alnajafnews.net/news/

news.php?action=fullnews&id=550, but all info from this site is to be viewed sceptically, since it belongs to the office of Jawad Shahristani, Sayyid Seestani’s son-in-law and top representative, who absolutely loathes Muqtada Al-Sadr.

Finally, there is a big struggle happening here in London between some influential expatriates, politicians in the Iraqi interim government and officials from the UN. The expatriates are demanding the right for postal voting, to allow them to take part in the forthcoming elections. The problem is many of them do not have official Iraqi citizenship (either it was rebuked, or they never received it) and many inside Iraq are reluctant to

allow moves for the accomodation of postal voting to happen. The conspiracy theorists are saying that is because of the estimated 5 million Iraqis living outside Iraq, roughly 4 million of them are Shia, which would heavily influence the result of any election. I can’t help but feel there is some truth to this, but then again, the logistical difficulty of such a large scale process should not be underestimated.