Cleric Inspired by Unity Behind Iraqi Singer's Bid for Fame
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 6, 2007
BAGHDAD, April 5 -- Inside a hut made of reeds, the Shiite cleric sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor and spoke of wonders.
"A great miracle took place a few days ago," said Iyad Jamaleddin.
He was referring to the victory of Shada Hassoun, an Iraqi woman who triumphed last week in the Lebanese television show "Star Academy," the "American Idol" of the Arab world. In her victory with 7 million votes, and in the frenzied celebration among Iraqis of all sects for the glamorous singer, he saw a glimpse of the political base he has spent four years trying to harness.
"For those who don't know the Iraqi people very well, they think they are extremist Shia and extremist Sunni and Kurds. This is not the reality," he said. "I have been confident that the Iraqi people yearn for a secular government and that the religious movements are weak. The masses, deep inside, are secular. And none of the politicians understood what I was saying until this great miracle happened."
Although it will take more than a pop star to change the ruling order in Iraq -- a country dominated by Shiite Muslim politicians both in parliament and in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government -- the forgotten secularists of Iraq are making political maneuvers they hope will strengthen their voice and position them to seize more power before the next elections.
To Jamaleddin, a man who wears the black turban denoting his place in the ancestral line of the prophet Muhammad, but who smokes cigars and celebrates the virtues of soccer and dancing, the growth of religious extremism has torn apart the fabric of Iraq.
He has a conference planned for this summer to launch what he calls the Iraqi Democratic Secular Movement. Former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi and former foreign minister Adnan Pachachi, meanwhile, have been barnstorming Iraq and the Middle East in recent weeks to gain support for a proposed coalition of groups both inside the parliament and outside the government that would unite secularists and moderates from different sectarian backgrounds.
"We have found a great deal of sympathy to support our point of view," Pachachi, a member of the 25-member Iraqi National List, said in a telephone interview from Bahrain. "I think people realize the alternative is continuing chaos in Iraq."
In recent weeks, the ruling Shiite coalition in the 275-member parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, lost 15 of its 130 seats when the Fadhila party announced it was leaving the bloc, which some politicians expect is a prelude to an alliance with Allawi's group. Another powerful segment of the ruling coalition, the political followers of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, has been riven with internal disputes.
Critics of the current Shiite-led government complain that Islamic theology infuses many of its decisions and that its leaders have made little tangible progress reconciling with the minority Sunnis, who controlled Iraq under the government of ousted President Saddam Hussein. To further his new alliance, Pachachi said he plans to convene a meeting soon to lay the structure of his new political bloc, known as the National Front, which he says could capture a majority in parliament if it includes the Kurdish parties and the leading Sunni bloc, the Tawafuq party.
"I feel there is a great deal of disenchantment with the track record of these parties in power," he said. "And we have to remember the overwhelming majority of Shias and Sunnis are not involved in this sectarian environment, they are victims of sectarianism."
Allawi, a secular Shiite, has said in recent weeks that if the new alliance could achieve a legislative majority, he would move to bring more former Baathists back to government jobs and overhaul the militia-infused police force.
Saleh al-Mutlak, a senior member of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, which holds 11 seats in parliament, said there have been discussions between his Fadhila Party and the Iraqi National List to form a nonsectarian coalition, but things "are not finalized yet."
"It will happen, but the problem is this is not enough, just to form a political front," he said.
He said the politicians are discussing alliances with groups now outside or with minor roles in the political process, such as former Baathists, leaders of the previous Iraqi army, ethnic Turkmens and Iraqi Christians to create a wider political base.
The prospect of the Kurds joining such an alliance may have been diminished by recent steps taken by the Shiite government to encourage Arabs to leave Kirkuk, a priority for the Kurds in their effort to claim the oil-rich city as part of their largely autonomous region in northern Iraq.
"The Kurds are aligned with the [Shiite] alliance, and they are partners in the national unity government," said Abdul Khaliq M.R. Zangana, a Kurdish member of parliament. As for the proposed political bloc, the Kurds have been circumspect. "The Kurdish alliance is studying the project," he said.
Inside his lavishly furnished office inside the fortified Green Zone, the deputy speaker of parliament, Khalid Attiah, was not worried about his ruling Shiite alliance losing its standing.
"They are weak," he said of the secularists. "The government is backed up strongly by the people and it is strong in the parliament -- and President Bush is clear in his support of this government. I don't think there's any chance for change for the time being."
Attiah noted that Iraqi society contains many factions, making it natural that the parliament would be divided along certain lines. "This is life," he said. "Everybody is keen to be represented."
Some politicians say they believe the talk of a new parliamentary alliance is a cover for an attempt by Allawi to take another run at ruling Iraq. Allawi was installed as interim prime minister in mid-2004 by the U.S.-led government in Iraq, but he was swept from office by the groundswell of support for religious parties in January 2005.
Some members of Allawi's current political alliance are worried that rushing to fashion a new structure out of Iraq's fledgling democracy could mire the nation in more brutal violence.
"We want to be very careful not to push the country toward civil war and take apart this country," said Hachim Hasani, a secular Sunni member of Allawi's faction. "It's going to be very difficult. This is a 'front of contradiction,' that's what I call it. You've got all these different groups who are not in harmony among themselves. I don't know if they're going to be able to build something out of that."
But to the Shiite cleric Jamaleddin, they've got to try. Each week he receives hundreds of e-mails from young Iraqis yearning for a respite from violence and for the freedom to have fun, he said.
"We are confident that all Iraqi people want life, and they love their country," he said. "I demand secularism, not because I'm against religion, but because I want to safeguard religion. Some politicians ask me how could you say such things while you're a clergyman. It's because I'm a clergyman that I want to defend my religion."
Special correspondent Saad al-Izzi contributed to this report.
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