Ali al-Sistani

Ali al-Sistani

Ali al-Sistani is one of only five living grand ayatollahs and the most senior Shia cleric in Iraq. The elderly cleric lived in uneasy stalemate with the former Iraqi regime. He spent long periods under house arrest but largely stayed out of politics. The low-profile approach he had to adopt to survive in Iraq has been criticised by younger, more radical Shia leaders such as the young upstart Moqtada Sadr - son of Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr, a cleric murdered by the old regime.

In April, just after the fall of the regime, club-wielding members of the Sadr Group besieged Ayatollah Sistani's house, demanding that he leave the country and that he recognise Moqtada Sadr as a marja. The ayatollah went into hiding but stayed in Iraq. The power struggle did turn bloody though. Days after returning from his exile in London, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, the son of a grand ayatollah from the 1980s, was stabbed to death in the shrine of Najaf. He had claimed to speak for Ayatollah Sistani.

The ayatollah represents the conservative and Persian-born mainstream of Iraqi Shias. One of the radical Sadr Group's rallying calls is that they want an Iraqi Arab marja.