On my way to Denver, Colorado:
People who focus on the low-rank (in the hierarchy of Shi`ite clerical education) of Muqtada as-Sadr miss the point. Yes, Muqtada As-Sadr is very junior in comparison with an Ayatollah; he is in a category of “a student-away-from the seminary.” And as I have written before, his knowledge of Arabic is strikingly weak for a Shi`ite cleric, and he lacks eloquence and precision in discourse. Graduates of the religious seminaries of Najaf usually achieve a very solid mastery of the language. I am always surprised to see Muqtada reading his Friday sermon, word-by-word, and not in perfect grammatical order. He clearly seems incapable of improvising a full sermon. But to dwell on the world of Shi`ite religious hierarchy is to miss the point about the dialectical relationship between the masses and the cleric in the Shi`ite community. The masses influence the Ayatollah (whoever he—it is always a “he”—is), just as the Ayatollah influences the masses. Remember that Khomeini in Iran was not the most senior cleric, and he had to put the Grand Ayatollahs of Iran under house arrest, to weaken their influence. But the masses forced the leadership of Khomeini on the nation. So you have to distinguish between the political and religious status of a cleric. Take Lebanon: Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah is far more senior in clerical position than Hizbullah’s leader Hasan Nasrallah. But Hasan Nasrallah has far more influence over the Shi`ites of Lebanon, including over those who follow Fadlallah as “object of emulation.” So when talking about Grand Ayatollah `Ali Sistani, as one op-ed writer in New York Times does today—you have to situate him within the context of Shi`ite public opinion. That is the lesson from examining the role of clerics in the Shi`ite anti-British rebellion in Iraq in 1920. If Shi`ite public opinion keeps changing against the Americans, and if Sistani ignores it, he could easily be marginalized.