Cockburn’s Muqtada is Most Important Book of the Year

Patrick Cockburn of The Independent recently published Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. Mr. Cockburn is that newspaper’s Iraq-Nam correspondent, and knows the country as well as any European having spent 30 years on that beat. His study of Muqtada al-Sadr is the most important book of the year, not only for the subject matter, but also for the grace of the prose and the author’s ability to explain seemingly arcane facts about Mesopotamia in language any reasonably intelligent 12-year-old could follow.

Just how important is Muqtada al-Sadr? When General David Petraeus addressed Congress earlier this year, that was the only name he mentioned. Nothing about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki nor Abu Ayyub Al-Masri, the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Yet, Mr. Cockburn doesn’t get to Hojatoleslam Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr’s life until Chapter 9.

In order to understand the Hojatoleslam’s life and cause, one must first understand Islam and politics in Iraq-Nam. Mr. Cockburn is rather brilliant at explaining the importance of Imam Ali to the Shi’ites and why there is a divide between Shi’ite and Sunni. Moreover, he details the difference between various strains of Shi’ism that no one in the western media mentions.

The son and nephew of two of the great modern Shi’ite leaders and martyrs, Muqtada al-Sadr has taken up the family business, which is the Sadrist movement in Iraq-Nam. The Sadrists have a credibility with the poor in the Shi’ite community (he apparently scares the willies out of the middle classes) because their leaders never left the country despite the persecution by the Saddamites. The other political parties can’t say that, and ironically, his movement may be taking money from Iran, but the leaders of other parties lived there during the Saddamite rule.

Where Mr. Cockburn’s contribution is greatest is in demonstrating that his subject is not a firebrand radical who will incinerate all the world, but rather he is a calculating and cunning practitioner of electoral and militia politics. This makes him far more dangerous, and that is why this journal has called him Iraq-Nam’s Ayatollah Khomeini for some time now. If Mr. Cockburn is right, the best thing the next President of the US can do is leave Iraq-Nam as quickly as possible. The occupation only strengthens the hands of those who oppose the US, and by leaving, Iran would have a huge headache on its hands – controlling Muqtada al-Sadr.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Kensington Review Home