Muqtada al-Sadr
Muqtada al-Sadr (; born 4 August 1974) is an Iraqi Shia Muslim cleric, politician and militia leader. He is the leader of the Sadrist Movement and the leader of the Peace Companies, a successor to the militia he had previously led during the American military presence in Iraq, the "Mahdi Army." In 2018, he joined his Sadrist political party to the Saairun alliance, which won the highest number of seats in the 2018 and 2021 Iraqi parliamentary elections. Titles He belongs to the prominent al-Sadr family that hails from Jabal Amel in Lebanon, before later settling in Najaf. Sadr is the son of Muhammad al-Sadr, an Iraqi religious figure and politician who stood against Saddam Hussein, and the nephew of Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr. He is often styled with the honorific title Sayyid. His formal religious standing within the Shi'i clerical hierarchy is comparatively mid-ranking. As a result of this, in 2008 Sadr claimed for himself neither the title of mujtahid (the equivalent of a senior religious scholar) nor the authority to issue any fatwas. In early 2008, he was reported to be studying to be an ayatollah, something that would greatly improve his religious standing. Family Muqtada al-Sadr is the fourth son of a famous Iraqi Shi'a cleric, the late Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr. He is also the son-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Both were revered for their concern for the poor. Muqtada is a citizen of Iraq; his great-grandfather is Ismail as-Sadr. Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, Muqtada al-Sadr's father, was a respected figure throughout the Shi'a Islamic world. He was murdered, along with two of his sons, allegedly by the government of Saddam Hussein. Muqtada's father-in-law was executed by the Iraqi authorities in 1980. Muqtada is a cousin of the disappeared Musa al-Sadr, the Iranian-Lebanese founder of the popular Amal Movement. In 1994, Sadr married one of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr's daughters. As of 2008, he had no children. Political positions Muqtada al-Sadr gained popularity in Iraq following the toppling of the Saddam government by the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Sadr has on occasion stated that he wishes to create an "Islamic democracy". Sadr commands strong support (especially in the Sadr City district in Baghdad, formerly named Saddam City but renamed after the elder Sadr). After the fall of the Saddam government in 2003, Muqtada al-Sadr organized thousands of his supporters into a political movement, which includes a military wing formerly known as the Jaysh al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army. The name refers to the Mahdi, a long-since disappeared Imam who is believed by Shi'as to be due to reappear when the end of time approaches. This group periodically engaged in violent conflict with the United States and other Coalition forces, while the larger Sadrist movement has formed its own religious courts and organized social services, law enforcement and prisons in areas under its control. Western media often referred to Muqtada al-Sadr as an "anti-American" or "radical" cleric. His strongest support came from the class of dispossessed