Sadr Pursues Image to Match His Power

Hundreds gather for Friday prayers in Sadr City, the Baghdad enclave that is Sadr's base of power. Last week, he let Iraqi troops enter to quiet clashes between militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi forces. (By Andrea Bruce/Post)
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"His brain was thick," said Abu Hawra, 47, a merchant in the Hannaneh neighborhood, where Sadr grew up, who would not give his full name. "His father used to complain a lot about his attendance at school. Moqtada was the source of great concern and discomfort for his father."

Two brothers, Mustafa and Muammal, were considered the heirs apparent to the family legacy. "His father used to consider them his right and left arm," Abu Hawra said. Another son, Murtada, reportedly suffers from long-standing medical problems.

Moqtada, his friends said, has always been a prankster, in ways both innocuous and macabre. Once, he made a big show of offering a 7-Up to a student, who was then surprised to learn that Sadr had filled the bottle with water. In a more recent incident, he anonymously sent Shaibani, the aide, text messages threatening to kill him, only to reveal later with laughter that it was all a practical joke.

Sadr, known in his youth for stuffing himself with as many as a dozen falafel at a time, was treated no differently than other students in the seminary, according to neighbors. In the late 1990s, Sadr's father sent him to oversee the administration of the newly opened Sadr Religious University.

He married a daughter of Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr during his 20s; the couple have no children.

Sadr took responsibility for the security of his father and for those attending Friday prayers, according to Dhirgham Bakr al-Zubaidi, who studied with both Sadr and his father and now heads the Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr Islamic Foundation in the city of Kufa, near Najaf. Zubaidi and others recalled Sadr once standing in front of the cars of Hussein's agents, who were trying to block his father's motorcade.

"I heard the martyr Sadr say: 'Moqtada is my bravery,' " Zubaidi said.

Then, on Feb. 19, 1999, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr and his two sons, Mustafa and Muammal, were assassinated by machine-gun-toting men. Moqtada was propelled into the leadership of the movement.

Creating the Militia

Sadrists flocked to Moqtada as the inheritor of his father's legacy. "People understand that Moqtada is the closest to the light of martyr Sadr. So they follow him because of that," Obaidi said.

After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, most American officials were unaware of Sadr's massive following and the hatred many of his devotees harbored toward the U.S. government. He was quickly seen as the polar opposite of Abdul Majeed al-Khoei, a rival Shiite cleric and supporter of the American invasion, who was hacked to death in Najaf in April 2003. Sadr was accused of ordering the killing; his aides have denied his involvement.

Sadr began speaking out against the occupation and formed the Mahdi Army militia in mid-2003. The militia was grounded in a theological concept developed by Sadr's father, who said that an army of believers would be led by the Imam Mahdi, a messianic figure who Shiites believe will redeem mankind.

The Mahdi Army took part in two major uprisings against the U.S. military in 2004, making Sadr popular as a resistance figure and showing how formidable his fighters were. But the battles also engendered anger from Iraqis who saw him as a hooligan.