Clerics Take Lead After Iraq Bombing

Few Iraqis seemed to pay attention to statements by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and other political leaders who called for calm. But many winced with trepidation or smiled with satisfaction as, hours after the Wednesday morning attack, the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the paramount Shiite Muslim religious leader here, issued an unusually blunt statement suggesting it was time for "the faithful" to start protecting religious sites -- an apparent endorsement of militias.

Others watched to see what radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr would do as he rushed back from Lebanon after the blast.

Even Sunni Muslim political leaders, who announced Thursday they were pulling out of talks on forming a new government to protest the current transitional government's failure to safeguard their mosques and offices, were outflanked by Sunni clerics.

The Muslim Scholars Assn., an umbrella group for Sunni religious leaders, issued a condemnation Thursday of their Shiite counterparts "for calling for demonstrations knowing that these demonstrations can be infiltrated and they cannot control the streets." The statement noted that "the resistance controlled Samarra for two years, and nothing happened to the shrines."

The dominance of clerics from both sects on the political scene marks a dramatic reversal of 85 years of secular rule in Iraq.

"The clerics are the kingmakers, the peacemakers and the war-makers," Ismael Zayer, editor in chief of Al Sabah al Jadid, a daily newspaper, said in dismay. "People are marching by order of clerics and stopping by order of clerics."

Iraq's political leaders and U.S.-led forces can shut down the country for a time and reduce the violence by setting up checkpoints and flooding the streets with soldiers. But few doubt who really hold the cards.

"If the religious leaders decided to go all the way to a civil war they could, in no time," said Hassan Bazzaz, a political scientist at Baghdad University. "And if they really wanted to stop it, they could. The religious leaders are the ones who have the real power."