Not necessarily. This article doesn't mention that Hakim is only one contender for the leadership of the Shiites. There is a stronger one -- Ayatollah Sistani, under house arrest by the regime since 1988. Sistani is the one who issued the almost unheard-of pro-U.S. fatwa a few weeks ago for Najaf, the center of Shiite Islam in Iraq.
Shiite SchismFor more than 20 years, Tehran has financed Iraqi Shiite exiles led by Muhammad Baqer Hakim Tabatabai, while Syria has financed and supported a rival group led by Muhammad Taqi Mudarressi. Both Hakim Tabatabai and Mudarressi, however, are regarded more as politicians than as theologians. Even if they return to Najaf, they will have to acknowledge Ayatollah Sistani's position as primus inter pares among Shiite clerics.For more than a decade, Khomeini warned his followers against "American Islam" (Islam-e-Amrikai), which he defined as a system under which "distinct spaces exist for religion and politics." Ironically, Shiism had always recognized that distinction. In a sense, it was Khomeini who had departed from tradition. Unlike Iran's ruling mullahs, who claim that they have a divine right to rule, Iraq's mullahs are opposed to a theocracy in Baghdad. "The clergy is the conscience of society," Ayatollah Sistani has written. "The administrative aspects of society's life must be left to men of politics."
Iraq's liberation is certain to inspire a lively debate within Shiism among those who, like the ayatollahs Sistani and Hussein Ali Montazeri in Iran, argue in favor of seeking a place in the new global system and those, like Ayatollah Khamenei and his associates, who still preach "exporting revolution" in the hope of conquering the entire world for their brand of Islam.
The American Marines who entered Najaf the other day did not know it, but they were opening a new chapter -- perhaps an overdue schism in the history of Shiism, the faith of some 180 million Muslims in more than 100 countries.