Posted on 02/04/2008 6:41:08 PM PST by nuconvert
The 'Manchurian Mullah'
February 01, 2008
New York Post
Amir Taheri
AS the "student" arrives in a bulletproof limousine with heavily armed guards, his teachers, ignoring that he's two hours late, greet him deferentially. The scene takes place at the Shiite seminary in Qom, Iran's holy city. The 35-year-old "student": Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, a militia often deemed one of Iran's chief assets in Iraq.
Sadr has spent much of the last 10 months in Iran, living in a 14-bedroom villa in Tehran's posh Farmanieh neighborhood. From there, he travels 90 minutes to Qom twice a week, for a crash course designed to transform him first into a Hojat al-Islam (Proof of Islam) and then a full-fledged ayatollah (Sign of God).
Sadr hails from an old family of clerics but was never meant for the cloth. His father and uncle were grand ayatollahs - until Saddam Hussein put both to death, then also eliminated Muqtada's elder brothers, who might have emerged as credible clerics. Thus, when Saddam fell in '03, Muqtada, although wearing a turban and a beard, had little religious training.
In the ensuing confusion, he tried to transform himself into a political leader by playing the pan-Arab card. Thanks to his family's renown and to Iraqi Shiites' thirst for power, Muqtada became a player in post-Saddam politics.
But it soon became clear that he would always be hamstrung by his lack of religious authority. Each time he tried to go beyond certain limits, Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani, the primus inter pares of Iraq's Shiite clergy, intervened to curtail his ambitions.
For a while, Sadr sought clerical cover from two ayatollahs whom his father had named "worthy of trust": Ayatollah Bashir Fayyadh, an Afghan-born cleric who lives in Najaf, and Ayatollah Muhammad Ha'eri Yazdi,
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Al-Sadr’s in Qom...
Off Topic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1952766/posts
“Iran: AIDS Rate Doubles In The Holy City Of Qom”
adnkronosinternational ^ | January 11, 2008 | adnkronosinterantional
Posted on 01/12/2008 4:41:54 PM PST by DogByte6RER
pong
Potential layer of overhead in the new Iraq.
At first I thought they were talking about McAmnesty, then I saw the word Mullah.
I thought someone had finally pegged Barak Obama.
Al Sadr could never tell Qom from Bum..
He should be turned into a full fledged martyr. Yesterday!
I THOUGHT, this was an article on Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
He has explosive adiposis. That, combined with premature jihadulation, could make quite a mess..
He does seem to walk in strange paths.
Maybe an assassin gets him before he can achieve the Ayatollah
status.
Iran continues to insure that our efforts in Iraq will be undone, but Bush and his new secdef Gates wish to be diplomatic rather than preemptive.
Gates and Brzezinski coauthored the 2004 CFR paper "Iran: Time for a New Direction" which is the old Neville Chamberlain direction.
And that worked well.
Yea rah John McCain national security hawk: widescreen teevees for the drooling Hannibal Lecters who would behead us all.
What an age.
LOL! I must admit I thought the same thing...
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