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align="center"><a href="/web/20030604192508/http://atimes.com/atimes/advertise.html"><strong><img height="18" src="/web/20030604192508im_/http://atimes.com/images/f_images/media.gif" width="80" border="0"></strong></a></div> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="10"> </td> <td width="407" align="left" valign="top"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td><font class="subhead"><strong class="head"> Middle East </strong></font> </td> </tr> </table> <br> <table width="392" border="0" align="left" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top" width="392"><font size="2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><font color="#000000" size="3"><strong>Enter the Iraqi Islamic Republic. Not quite yet</strong></font><br>By Ramin Mostaghim <br><br>TEHRAN - It has become fashionable to say that Saddam Hussein's fall would prompt Shi'ite-dominated Iran to export its kind of Islamic government to Iraq, but analysts say this is too simplistic - and reflects a poor understanding of the mix of religion and politics in the Middle East. <br><br>This "theory" has been bruited about during the US-led war on Iraq. It was further fueled by the May 10 return to that country of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Hakim, leader of Iraq's best-known opposition group, the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, after 23 years in Iran. <br><br>Reports of how Iraqi Shi'ites this month took to Baghdad's streets, some carrying pictures of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, added to this perception. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also urged Shi'ite clerics in Iraq to have more say in a post-Saddam Iraq, saying any form of a secularized version of Islam is "American Islam". <br><br>But academics and ordinary Iranians say that the newfound freedom of Iraqi Shi'ites, who make up the majority of the country's population but were long oppressed under Saddam's Sunni-dominated government, would not automatically translate into support for an Islamic republic - or any united desire by Iranians to see this emerge across the border. <br><br>"The pivotal question in a post-Saddam regime will be 'how powerful is Shi'ite politics'?" asked Mohsen Abdulli, a former Marxist who has spent five years in jail. "Viewing the infighting and inner conflicts of Shi'ite politicians for and against the Islamic regime in Iran, and their taking different versions of political Islam within the established reading of the Shi'ite religion, I can assert that Shi'ism as an ideology is bankrupt," he said. "It cannot be marketed and exported as easily as the beginning of Iran's Islamic Revolution." <br><br>In an article this month, Emadeddin Baqi, who has been jailed for his research on Iranian dissidents and intellectuals, wrote: "Even those clerics who were already pro-Islamic government are not advocating an Iranian Islamic-style government." <br><br>Shi'ite Muslims are followers of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, after whose death these two strands of Islam emerged to follow different revered leaders. Iraq's Najaf and Karbala cities are the symbols of martyrdom for Shi'ites. <br><br>There is a mix of factors behind why Iraq is not necessarily going Iran's way, despite the Shi'ite links between them, and why Iran may not necessarily be pushing this openly either. There are differences between Shi'ites in Iran and Iraq, and between the two countries, like there are differences between various tribes in the region, experts say. <br><br>Even within Iran itself, there are differences between the clergy's and politicians' views of post-Saddam Iraq. The Islamic clergy in Iran have varying views on Iraq and the role of Shi'ites there as well. While Khamenei appears to want Shi'ite clerics in Iraq to flex their political muscle, Hakim, on his arrival in Basra in southwest Iraq, said: "I am a religious clergyman, not a specialist in politics." <br><br>"The enlightened and disillusioned mullahs are clever enough not to repeat the same mistake in Iraq by pursuing an Iranian Islamic model of government in Iraq," explained Hamid Reza Jalaeepour, political science professor at Tehran University. "If Hakim had not expressed his disavowal of politics, he would not have received the figurative passport to go to seminary schools in Najaf and Karbala," Baqi said in an interview. <br><br>He recalled that Khomeini, an exile in Iraq in the 1960s, had not been able to go to Najaf until he made a commitment not to engage in politics against the Iranian monarchy at the time. "Ironically, Hakim and Khomeini discreetly avoided politics in order to be accommodated in Iraq," Baqi said. <br><br>"The survival secret of the seminary schools and Shi'ite institutions in Iraq and even in Qom, Isfahan and Mashhad [in Iran] is their standing aloof from political challenges in both Iraq and Iran," he said, explaining that Shi'ite institutions may now well prefer to stick to religious matters. <br><br>"The Najaf and Karbala seminary schools in Iraq will go back to tradition and focus on Islamic jurisprudence and precepts," added Seyyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, the 56-year-old grandson of the founder of the seminaries in the Iranian holy city of Qom 82 years ago. <br><br>Traditionally, seminary schools have received direct contributions from Shi'ite people and rejected government financial help to keep their independence "and now in the post-Saddam regime there is a chance for that tradition to prevail", added Damad. <br><br>"Those who advocate an Islamic republic in Iraq are in the minority," said Ahmad Helli, an Iraqi refugee from Najaf who was a sociology teacher and has been a fish peddler in Qom for the past 12 years. "Even Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Hakim, who was warmly welcomed in Iraqi Shi'ite cities, was booed in Qom in Iran by some Iraqi refugees." <br><br>Not that Shi'ism does not make for a very strong bond. Shi'ites have the same rituals, many based around Imam Hussein, who was killed in Karbala in 680. Territorial borders do not limit Shi'ite clerical institutions. In remarks that show how Iranian Shi'ites hardly think of Najaf or Karbala as cities in another country, Abbas Hasani, a student at a Qom seminary, said: "Inshallah [if God is willing], I would like to go to Najaf or Karbala for my advanced studies." <br><br>"Shi'ite clerical establishments have no motherland. Shi'ite clergymen, based on their textbooks in seminary schools, are not expected to believe in a modern nation-state," explained Mahmoud Sa'riulqalam of Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. <br><br>But tribalism among people from different regions creates divisions that affect Shi'ite groups. Helli said that the Iraqi Shi'ite refugees in Qom, hailing from different areas in Iraq, could not even have a coordinated procession of lamentation for Imam Hussein to mark Saddam's departure, so "how will they establish an Islamic Shi'ite government in Iraq?" <br><br>"History teaches us that whenever intrusions were made to Mesopotamia [Iranian in 539 BC and Greek in 331], and when Baghdad was invaded [by Timur the Lame in 1401, by the Persians in 1509 and by the Turks in 1534], the impacts were great in the Middle East," said Hoshang Shokranian of the University of Kermanshah in western Iran, a two-hour drive from the Iraqi border. "The schism in Shi'ite politics is the latest one thanks to US President [George W] Bush's war against Saddam's regime," he added. <br><br>(Inter Press Service)</font> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top" width="392"> </td> </tr> </table> </td> <td width="105" align="middle" valign="top"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td height="44" align="middle" valign="center"><font class="time"><strong> Jun 4, 2003 </strong></font> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td height="75"><img height="75" src="/web/20030604192508im_/http://atimes.com/images/f_images/1pix.gif" width="1"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="middle" valign="center"><a href="javascript:atprint();"><img height="26" src="/web/20030604192508im_/http://atimes.com/images/f_images/print.gif" width="91" border="0"></a></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="5" align="middle" valign="center"><img height="5" 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