Saghir's sermon is like a banner in the wind. At times, it is limp before it begins to flap on a light breeze. It sags, then is blown by a gust. Many gifted preachers steadily build to a crescendo, but few seem as skillful as Saghir in gliding from one extreme to the other.
Saghir said he never rehearses his speech, never thinks ahead about what he will say. "I watch the people as I give my sermon," he said. "I can tell if I'm having an effect or not."
A man kisses Saghir at the Baratha mosque after his 2003 return. How he fares in politics could help clarify the Shiite clergy's still-ambiguous role.
(AP Television News Photo)
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In contrast to the public statements of the Supreme Council, with their emphasis on reconciliation with and inclusion of disenchanted Sunnis, Saghir is brusque with his followers. He speaks as if delivering self-evident truths, in impeccable, eloquent Arabic.
Insurgents? They are dismissed as Hussein loyalists disguised as holy warriors -- "Baathists wearing beards and turbans," he calls them in one sermon.
He calls their leaders the "heroes of satellite television," mocking their penchant for issuing statements on video. He ridicules the doctrine of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni Muslim group, as "Saddam Hussein's Islam." And purges lie ahead, he warns, for Iraq's outgoing interim government, which he calls tainted by "the dirty faces of the Baathists.".
"The killers of today," he says in another sermon, "are the same killers as yesterday."
National reconciliation? "With whom?" he has asked in more than one talk. "With those criminals who have shed the blood of our people in Hilla, Karbala, Najaf and every other place in Iraq?"
Time and again, he insists that patience is running out.
"We warn you about the anger of the gentle and the patient," he said. "When the anger begins, nothing can stop it."
A Race Against Time
A man with a rifle sits outside Saghir's office. It is an understandable precaution.
Since he returned to Iraq in April 2003, Saghir, a father of five, estimates he has faced 21 attempts to kill him or his followers -- mortars fired a half-dozen times at the mosque, five would-be suicide bombers prevented from getting inside, a fusillade of gunfire at a car he was thought to be riding in (he wasn't), and assorted other car bombings and attempted shootings.
Khalid Fatlawi, a bookseller at the mosque, said: "He doesn't care about death. He has no fear."
"Why should I be scared?" Saghir asked as he sat in his office, which has newly painted walls, six shelves of books and two telephones.
Imbued like many Shiites with a reverence for sacrifice and struggle, he and his followers view the attacks as giving them a certain street credibility. To instill confidence in his followers, he said, he must speak with confidence.
