[Marxism] Sadr cleric: "We won't be voting"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, January 29, 2005
Shiite Faction Ready to Shun Sunday's Election in Iraq
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 28 - Less than 48 hours before nationwide elections
here, Nasir al-Saedy, one of the city's most popular Shiite clerics, stood
before a crowd of 20,000 Iraqis and uttered not a single word about the vote.

Sheik Saedy spoke of faith, humility and the power of God. But about
Sunday's elections, the first here in more than 30 years, nothing.

For the throngs of Iraqis who had come to Al Mohsen Mosque to listen, the
sheik's silence came through loud and clear.

And it foreshadowed a less than overwhelming voter turnout in many parts of
Iraq.

"God willing, I will not be voting," Ziad Qadam, an unemployed 27-year-old,
said after Friday Prayers at the mosque in Sadr City, the vast Shiite
district in Baghdad. "Our religious leaders have not told us to vote."

Sheik Saedy is an acolyte of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, and
his Friday sermon seemed to settle for good the question of Mr. Sadr's
place in the country's new democratic order.

Mr. Sadr, who led a series of uprisings against American forces last year,
has sent conflicting signals about his political intentions.

In the months since the Americans crushed his revolt, he quietly fielded a
group of candidates for the national assembly, while telling his followers
that he planned to boycott the vote.

Mainstream Shiite leaders believe that for some months Mr. Sadr has been
playing a double game - backing political candidates on one hand, hinting
at a boycott to his followers on the other - as part of a calculated
strategy to maximize his political influence.

Until now, Iraq's mainstream Shiite leaders, who have been trying to coax
Mr. Sadr and his vast following into the democratic process, had been
hoping that he would finally tell his followers to give up their rebellion
and turn to the ballot box.

His silence, and that of his supporters like Sheik Saedy, signals that he
had decided to hedge his bets against the election. He wants the benefits
of being part of the democratic process, while publicly denouncing it for
the followers who do not subscribe to it.

The reticence about Sunday's election in Mr. Sadr's Shiite mosque was
echoed across town in a large Sunni mosque as well: Uum al Qura,
headquarters of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Sunni group that
has also urged Iraqis to stay home on election day. There, the sermon went
on about faith and responsibility, with not a word about the election.

In some ways, the apathy of followers of Mr. Sadr is more worrisome to
Iraqi leaders and American officials. Buoyed by the military defeat of his
Mahdi Army over the summer, both were confident that he would move toward
the political center. In sermons in mosques across Iraq, he has
continuously mocked those expectations.

Mr. Sadr, only 30, commands a huge following across the country,
particularly in the Shiite slums of Basra and Baghdad. The Shiite
electorate is thought to make up a majority of all voters in Iraq, and
Shiite leaders hope that these voters, including Mr. Sadr's followers, will
help propel them to political power here for the first time.

Not even the urgings of the country's highest Shiite religious leader,
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who declared that it was the religious duty
of all Iraqis to vote, has appeared to move Mr. Sadr or his faithful.

"Ayatollah Sistani has his political statements, and we have our own," said
Ahmed al-Kauai, a Sadr cleric who attended the sermon in Baghdad on Friday.
"We won't be voting."

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/international/middleeast/29iraq.html


Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org


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