Iraq's critical Sistani factor

And last August, after Prime Minister Allawi and US officials had failed to contain the army of militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Sistani successfully negotiated an end to bloody fighting between supporters of Mr. Sadr and US forces in the Muslim holy city of Najaf. Though Sadr was allowed to remain free, Sistani defused a battle that threatened to inflame the predominantly Shiite south of the country.

Shiite clerics say that there has been one principal concern behind most of Sistani's political pronouncements: that the country's majority Shiite population never be frozen out of Iraqi politics again, and that the senior religious leaders, or marjiya, in Najaf play their part in safeguarding the communities' interests.

Under the Ottoman Empire, Iraq was dominated by a Sunni Arab elite. When the British set about cobbling together the modern Iraqi state in the 1920s, they mostly leaned on the old Ottoman administrators and Amir Faisal, the Sunni Arab they imported to be Iraq's king.

In the early 1920s, the British devised a partial election process to ratify their vision for Iraq, and also imposed a military treaty that left British forces largely in control of the country. That decision was the source of much of the turbulence and revolution that marked Iraq's early years.

At the time, the most important ayatollahs in Najaf issued fatwas telling their followers not to vote, because they felt the process would lead only to an unfair order. But the upshot of their abstention was that the clergy lost all influence over the process. The chain of events led to the Baath revolution and Hussein's reign, during which Shiites suffered heavily.

"In the 1920s, the marjiya were saying it was wrong to have an election under occupation, exactly what the Sunnis are saying today,'' says Mr. Jabbar. "The Shiites quickly recognized their mistake and vowed to correct it at the earliest opportunity. This is the first opportunity."

"The marjiya have studied everything surrounding the 1920 revolution - the British ended up writing our constitution,'' says Mr. Sagheer, the Sistani aide. "Now we insist that the same mistake not be made again."

While Sistani's involvement so far has been a moderating voice, stressing the need for free elections and the protection of Sunni and other minority rights in any Iraqi government, he is not a believer in a strict separation of church and state.

He's long rejected the thought of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who lived in exile in Najaf before leading Iran's Islamic revolution and called for wilayat al-faqih, or the guardianship of the jurisprudent, that directed clerical rule. But Sistani has also written about the need for clerical influence in political life.

"Sistani in his fatwas does talk about ... the guardianship of the jurisprudent in social issues,'' says Mr. Cole, the history professor. Sistani's preference is "that clerics mostly leave running the state to lay persons. But the implication is that Shiite lay persons will be influenced by Sistani's fatwas on legislative issues."

Analysts note that one of the main differences between Shiite and Sunni Islam is the hierarchical nature of Shiism. Almost all Shiites adopt an "object of emulation," or marja al-taqlid, a senior cleric whose rulings on what is permitted under Islam they closely follow. Sistani is the most widely followed marja in Iraq.

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