« MLK National Memorial: Reverent or eerie? | Main | Brainstem Alert: You gotta see this »
May 12, 2003
Ayatollah Hakim returns to Najaf
A long-exiled Iraqi Shi'ite cleric arrived in Najaf on Monday, a holy city in Iraq where clerics and former opposition groups are vying to gain a foothold after the fall of Saddam Hussein.Thousands of Shi'ites, Iraq's majority but long oppressed by Saddam, lined the streets to greet Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, who has led the Iran-based opposition Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) for more than two decades....
"I am not here to promote myself," the 63-year-old said, insisting there was unity among clerics in Najaf.
During his speech, a group of supporters of Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, an Iraqi senior cleric who was assassinated in 1999, worked through the crowd, holding Sadr's posters high.
"The ones who were abroad living in luxury cannot be real representatives," said Sheikh Adnan al-Shahmani, a spokesman for Sadr's son Moqtada, himself now a popular religious leader.
"This goes for all the opposition who lived outside."
Posted by Mike at May 12, 2003 02:52 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.topdog08.com/cgi-bin/mt-trackback.cgi/57
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)