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The movement was founded in Qassam's time, where communists and atheists ran wild (good times, from what I read.. shame it turned out as it did). The Shia establishment wanted to prove that they were not irrelevant, and under then-marjaiyya Muhsin al-Hakim's (grandfather of Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, SCIRI's martyred leader) blessings, al-Daawa was formed in Najaf under mostly the leadership of a man named Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr. Sayyid al-Sadr was a peer of Khomeini, his superior for years until the latter ran into a bit of luck in deposing the guy watching over America's oil next door.
From early on it was a social & political movement, under General Bakr and moreso under Saddam becoming increasingly militant. The big shift in the party came in the late 70s/80s, insprired in part by the increasingly authoritarian state in Baghdad and the example of the successful revolution next door. Attacks on Baathist government officials were stepped up, and the reprisals were harsh:--among other restrictions such as party membership being made a death sentence, Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr was detained and executed. After this a branch of the militant activist wing of the party (naming itself Shahid al-Sadr) went on a bender--humanbombs were employed against Saddam's allies in the region and his big boss, with the Iraqi, and French/American embassys in Lebanon in '81 & '83 respectively mysteriously transforming themselves into piles of rubble (the latter 2 mistakenly attributed to Hizbullah, which did not exist at the time), attacked the Kuwaiti Emir, the French & American military barracks in Lebanon, and various buildings in Iraq, with various other forms of violence employed in various other directions. I point out the Lebanon activity, it is a fact that very early on Hizbullah owed a great deal to the Iraqi al-Daawa party, the latter which operated as an international movement.
The 80s saw change in the party. Attacks on the Baathist government continued in the course of the war with Iran, some openly siding with Khomeini (this permanently fucked their relations with the Iraqi nationalist tendencies and some sections of society) along with Hakim's SCIRI umbrella (the latter was formed by Tehran originally for use as a "5th column", and as a provisional government if the Islamic Republic was ever able to capture al-Basrah--which it never did). Some of the more activist cadres deserted the Sadr-less movement for Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim's SCIRI umbrella movement in Tehran, others split for an al-Daawa faction based in Tehran but remaining outside Hakim's umbrella organization, others went to Europe (London, officially), a third branch maintained itself underground in Iraq. The three tendencies still exist. The London branch is the collaborator wing, led not by a religious scholar but a technocrat who threw his lot in with the invaders. The Tehran branch grudgingly accepted it on the Iranian gov'ts advice--for some reason Iran is being very useful to the Americans/British on this. I don't know what happened to the underground branch, maybe it melted in the other Sadr's movement.
Considering their roots, it's really ironic that they're lining up to kiss our flag with the rest of them.
The Muqtada Sadr making the headlines today is not directly descended from the martyred al-Daawa Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, but they are related. The tendencies are somewhat different, Muqtada's father having a particularly newer and younger drive to him. I think Muqtada's father is a cousin of Mohammed Baqir. Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr is distinct in his own way, rivalling Sistani for Iraqi Shia leadership in the 90s. After the '91 intifada, Sistani took the "let's keep quiet and try to stay alive" approach he seems to be shedding, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr a more confrontational.
What's important about his movement, among other things I won't go into, is both the ties he established in what is now "Sadr City", the source of his son's strength now, and also among the Turkoman in the north--he was able to get them to adapt their eccentric ways for a more orthodox Shiism, and they're now supporters of Muqtada in the north. That'll make Kirkuk a more messy matter.
Sadr's people support Kazim al-Haeri as the marjaiyya (essentially, "Dean" of the Najafi seminaries and most respected leader of Shias all over the world) and inheritor of his father's work, he having been the top student of his martyred father. Parties like SCIRI/al-Daawa/etc give that nod to Sistani--though they disobey his unwavering disapproval of the puppet Iraqi Governing Council--, along with most Iraqi Shias according to the common information (I don't know for sure based on any personal knowledge, I can only go by what I can filter out from what I read). While being the only Arab Iraqi-born Grand Ayatallah and one of the only 5 Grand Ayatallahs based in Najaf (well, Haeri lives in Qom for the moment--at any rate he's Iraqi Arab by birth, 2 including Sistani are Persian, the other two are from Afghanistan and Pakistan), Haeri is not as accomplished or respected as Sistani. Even so, that among other things is the source of the Sadr/Sistani rivalry that commonly goes without explanation.
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