But as Patrick Cockburn, the Iraq correspondent for The Independent of London, argues convincingly in Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival and the Struggle for Iraq (Scribner, May 2008), such representations overlook the causes of al-Sadr's rise to political prominence. More importantly, they grossly misrepresent his unique blend of Shiite religious doctrine and Iraqi nationalism, as well as the fact that he leads the only truly mass political movement in Iraq.
"Part of the mystery concerning Muqtada has its origin in simple ignorance," writes Cockburn. Muqtada's emergence as a central figure in Iraq, he continues, is surprising only if one is unfamiliar with "the bloody and dramatic story of resistance to Saddam Hussein by Iraqi Shia as a whole and the al-Sadr family in particular."
Over the first several chapters of Muqtada, Cockburn traces this largely untold, and, indeed, bloody chronicle.
At the heart of Muqtada's backstory are his father-in-law -- Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr -- and his father -- Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr. Both attained the honorific of Grand Ayatollah and were killed by Saddam's regime. Baqir was executed in 1980 and Sadiq was assassinated in 1999, along with two of Muqtada's brothers.
http://newageislam.com/muqtada,-the-future-of-iraq?/islam-and-the-west/d/381
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10:04 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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