Only two decades ago, the Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr was not known outside Iraq, not even among many Iraqis, but after the fall of the regime of President Saddam Hussein in 2003, this man began to occupy a prominent position in the Iraqi scene. Now from Iraq?
A question that was discussed by the American writer and researcher at the American Enterprise Institute Michael Rubin in an article in the Interest National.
He stated that with the fall of Baghdad, American officials tried to communicate with the religious leadership in Iraq through Abd al-Majid al-Khoei, son of the late Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, but a week after al-Khoei's return to Najaf, he visited the shrine of Imam Ali, where he was assassinated.
The writer says that this coincided with the emergence of Muqtada al-Sadr's name as the heir of the al-Sadr family, a religious family with a wide reputation and famous for science and religiosity.
However, Muqtada - the writer adds - and unlike his two brothers who were killed, like his father, by the security forces of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, he was not famous for knowledge or piety, but he was a preacher, although his religious knowledge was shallow, according to the writer.
The writer pointed out that Sadr's populist rhetoric found fertile ground in the poor neighborhoods of Baghdad, and became a political force of great importance.
Although the Americans viewed Muqtada as an ally of Iran, many of their officials see this de facto Shiite leader's alliance with current Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and the KDP as a fundamental and symbolic shift in his ideological approach.
However, the writer believes that the belief that Muqtada has changed or that he is seeking a liberal Iraq that is not engulfed by corruption is just nonsense, claiming that Muqtada al-Sadr's real ambition is to destroy the Iraqi regime, not because the corruption inherent in it bothers him, but because political give-and-take contradicts his agenda. the broadest.
He adds that Muqtada al-Sadr may hide his goals for tactical reasons, but when it comes to ideology, he means what he says, he despises the West, and he is sincere in his hostility to Israel as well as his hatred of homosexuals.
The writer concludes by saying that what Muqtada al-Sadr wants is to be a reference for all Iraqis, as is the case of the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ali Khamenei, for the Shiites of Iran, claiming that he seeks to impose what he cannot gain unanimously.