Obituary:
Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir Al-Hakim (1939-2003)
Losing a guide
"SAYYID Baqir Al-Hakim is our shahid (martyr). He is the 63rd martyr the Al- Hakim family offers in the service of Islam," said a weeping Mohsen Al-Hakim, the nephew of Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir Al-Hakim, who was assassinated on Friday, 29 August, in a car bombing in Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf. "He was a political and spiritual marja'a (spiritual guide). We might not find someone comparable to him and his departure will create a huge void in the Islamic world," Mohsen Al-Hakim told Al-Ahram Weekly in a telephone call from Al-Najaf on Monday.
Born into one of the most notable Shi'ite families in Al-Najaf in 1939, both Baqir Al-Hakim's lineage and the long-standing tradition of opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime -- the legacy of the Al-Hakim family -- earned him respect among Iraq's Shi'ites and across much of the Muslim world. His opposition to tyranny led many observers to describe him as "Iraq's Khomeini".
Baqir Al-Hakim's father Mohsen Al-Hakim Al-Tabataba'i was the most senior Shi'ite leader during the 1950s and 1960s. He was also a vocal critic of Saddam's practices against the Shi'ites. This tradition of opposition to the Ba'athist regime has extracted a heavy toll upon the Al-Hakim family, whose members have been systematically persecuted during the past three decades. Baqir Al- Hakim's political activities during the 1970s led to his imprisonment in 1972, 1977 and 1979. He fled to post-revolutionary Iran in 1980. There he founded the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and remained in exile until his return to Iraq on 12 May.
Seven assassination attempts were made against him by Saddam regime agents, but during his years of exile Al-Hakim did not lose touch with his homeland. He sought to present himself to the Iraqis as a partner in their suffering.
Under his guidance the SCIRI has grown into one of the most competent Iraqi opposition movements, with a paramilitary wing called the Badr Brigade made up of 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers.
"He was someone who truly believed in institutions. He founded the women's organisation, the youth organisation and a human rights unit affiliated to the SCIRI," Sahib Al-Hakim, one of Baqir Al-Hakim's cousins and a human rights advocate in London, told the Weekly.
The SCIRI, however, maintained a relationship with the United States fraught with ambiguity. Known to have refused an offer of US funding and keen to distance itself from American interests, opposing any American intervention in Iraqi affairs, the SCIRI nevertheless shares an interest in quelling violent resistance with the occupying Coalition Authority. Baqir Al-Hakim's order that the Badr Brigade cease any military activities in Iraq during the Anglo-American invasion and subsequent occupation surprised many observers.
During his May homecoming he was given a hero's welcome while the occupying powers nervously monitored his every move. Baqir Al-Hakim quickly stepped down from the political leadership of the SCIRI, promoting his brother Abdel-Aziz Al-Hakim, who had been heading the Badr Brigade. He decided to confine himself to the spiritual aspects of leadership.
In his newly defined capacity he admonished supporters not to use force against the occupying forces and encouraged what he described as "peaceful resistance". Many of his public pronouncements were nevertheless anti-American. In his last interview, conducted by the daily Al-Ahram on Thursday, 28 August, Baqir Al-Hakim expressed dissatisfaction with the US policies in Iraq. "We told the Americans that their policies in Iraq are wrong and their dealing with the situation illogical," he said. In an interview with the Weekly conducted just weeks before his return to Iraq, Baqir Al-Hakim outlined his vision of a future government in Iraq. He did not back a system based on sectarian or ethnic divisions. Despite the fact that the Shi'ite population was disempowered during the Saddam years, Baqir Al-Hakim has always spoken in favour of a multiparty system promoting the rights and values embraced by all Iraqis and devoid of any sectarian agenda.
Perhaps the second most important issue to which the Ayatollah devoted his considerable capacities was the unity between Islam's two main sects, the Sunnis and Shi'ites. A decade ago he founded the Supreme Council for the Rapprochement Between Sects, which sponsored conferences seeking to reconcile the two groups of believers. It came as no surprise then, that Ayatollah Baqir Al-Hakim's last words in his Friday sermon stressed the unity of the Iraqi people. Iraqi unity, however, remains the most difficult challenge facing the inheritors of Al- Hakim's legacy.
By
Omayma Abdel-Latif
