2018/04/15 by Caroleen Marji Sayej · 5 citations
Social Sciences · #Islamic Studies and History #Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
paper · doi:10.7591/cornell/9781501715211.001.0001
openalex publication_date 2018/04/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/05
<italic>Patriotic Ayatollahs</italic> explores the contributions of the Grand Ayatollahs to the process of state and nation-building after the 2003 Iraq war. These figures, the so-called Grand Ayatollahs, the highest-ranking clerics of Shiism, took on a new and, to many observers at the time, unexpected political role after the fall of Saddam Hussein. They served as guardians of the democratic process in Iraq, regularly intervening in the process of institution building. They also served as key public intellectuals and moral guides on key domestic issues, such as the insurgency and the emergence of violent and widespread terrorism. Their brand of political activism was novel insofar as it neither sought to reproduce the Iranian form of governance, nor adhere to the quietist model normally associated with the clerics of Iraq. Together with other new social actors who competed for power, Sistani and other leading ayatollahs played a central role in public debates, as they sought to secure their own position in the new public sphere. Drawing mainly on previously unexamined Arabic-language fatwas, speeches and communiqués of Iraq’s four grand ayatollahs, this book offers an analysis of the ways in which their new discourses and narratives shaped and framed public debates after 2003.