BAGHDAD — Rasha Abdullah considers herself a devout and observant Shiite Muslim. She dresses modestly in full-length black robes, carefully covers her black hair with a hijab, or headscarf, and makes regular pilgrimages to Shiite shrines.
But she recoiled with distaste when asked whether she would support a breakaway government that Muqtader Sadr, a street-smart young Shiite cleric, is trying to launch, using his large following among disadvantaged, disaffected Shiites as a springboard.
"No, no, no," said Abdullah, a 20-year-old student who lives in a middle-class Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad and hopes to become an engineer.
"They want there to be a Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice -- like the Taliban! -- that would beat women who didn't veil themselves," she said, shaking her head. "Things of that nature, wearing a veil, or not, should be our free and personal choice."
Sadr's stature as head of a self-declared alternative government and leader of a shadowy militia has, on the surface at least, caused only a minor ripple of concern in Iraq's interim governing body and the provisional U.S.-led administration, which still makes all the important decisions here.
His burgeoning movement among the poor has caused consternation among moderate, educated and better-off Shiites, who fear it could undermine what until now has been a fairly cordial working relationship between Shiite community leaders and coalition military authorities -- and perhaps deprive Shiites, who make up about 60% of Iraq's population, of some of the newfound political clout they expect to wield in postwar Iraq.
Even critics take Sadr seriously because of his pedigree and his popularity among the growing number of Iraqis unhappy with the U.S. occupation. Six months after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, the average Iraqi is long past the euphoria of the dictator's fall, but still far from confident that the country will claim a place in the developed world any time soon.
The objections voiced by more mainstream Shiites to Sadr rest largely on his vocal and confrontational stance toward the Americans and Iraq's U.S.-appointed interim authority, the Governing Council.
From mosques in Shiite strongholds like the Baghdad slum of Sadr City and the southern holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, the young cleric has denounced the Americans as clumsy aggressors who have overstayed their welcome, and lambasted the Governing Council as timorous and ineffectual.
