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And I've brought his name up every chance I've gotten as someone who was going to mean trouble.
Here's something from April 19, 2003:
"While Shiites refer to the seminary as the source of ultimate authority, often waiting days for answers to questions they send by courier to Najaf, their allegiance is generally paid to one or another of the three remaining senior clerics there.
"Though Sheik Ali al-Sestani is the most senior of them, the office of the late Mr. Sadr, run now by his son Moqtadah al-Sadr, has been most active and most radical in its message since the fall of Mr. Hussein's government.
"Many clerics, troubled by the radical language of Mr. Sadr's followers, say Mr. Sestani is promoting a more moderate message. The United States has already tried to exploit that division by sending a returning exile cleric into Najaf in the days after the fall of the city in the hope of winning support from the clergy there. But that cleric, Sheik Abdel Majid al-Khoei, was killed last week when he tried to establish his authority by reconciling with the caretaker of Ali's tomb, a man widely disparaged in the Shiite community in Najaf for his collaboration with Mr. Hussein's government."
And here's something from May 1, 2003:
"NAJAF, Iraq - Moqtada al Sadr is a young Shiite cleric of low rank who was virtually unknown a month ago, but his name now evokes fear in this holy city.
"His followers have been blamed for the brutal slaying last month of a pro-Western Shiite cleric in a violent confrontation that drove Iraq's top Shiite spiritual leaders into seclusion and brought Sadr to the attention of both Iraqis and the United States.
The son of a grand ayatollah who was assassinated under Saddam Hussein, Sadr is now the only religious voice speaking out in this city at the epicenter of the Shiite faith. With the United States pressing Iraq's Shiite majority to support a democratic government, Sadr has emerged as an unchallenged advocate for what he calls 'righteous Islamic rule.' "
And this from August 5, 2003:
"Last Thursday, about 10,000 young men reportedly showed up in the holy city of Najaf to join the 'army of al-Mahdi'. The volunteers had responded to a request by Muqtada al-Sadr, a 30-year-old anti-American cleric with an expanding following among the dissatisfied Iraqi Shi'ites. The cleric has been trying to establish himself as the leader of the Iraqi Shi'ites since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime.
His army is named after Mahdi, the 12th Imam of the Shi'ites, who is believed to have disappeared about 1,200 years ago. Being a descendent of the Prophet Mohammad, the imam will reappear to save the world when corruption and oppression dominates, according to the Shi'ite faith. His reappearance will therefore end tyrannical and corrupt regimes. This concept of the promised savior (or messiah) has existed in other religions and different Islamic sects in various forms. Al-Sadr's choice of name for his army indicates his intention to capitalize on this belief's message, ie, fighting the oppressors, now symbolized by the US occupying force. According to some reports, an additional reason for this naming could be a belief among some of al-Sadr's followers who consider him as a Mahdi.
<snip>
"The army of al-Mahdi is yet to become a military force to reckon with. Given the growing opposition among the Iraqis, including the Shi'ites, who account for 60 percent of the population, there seems to be no shortage of recruits for this army. In addition to those who showed up in Najaf, about 1,000 people from Baghdad's poor neighborhood of Saddam City, now renamed al-Sadr City, responded to al-Sadr's call."
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