Moktada al-Sadr

Moktada al- Sadr , 1973?-, Iraqi Shiite cleric. The son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999 (presumably by Saddam Hussein 's secret police), he emerged after the American invasion of Iraq as a savvy, militantly Islamist and anti-American leader, with significant support among poorer and younger Iraqi Shiites, particularly in the Sadr City section of Baghdad, a Shiite enclave named for his father. Accused of involvement in the assassination (2003) of Ayatollah Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a moderate who had U.S. support, Sadr led his militia, the Mahdi Army, in two abortive uprisings against the U.S. occupation in 2004. Subsequently, he has supported involvement in the political process, despite denouncing the constitution, and was a significant force in the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite religious parties. In late 2007, he ordered his militia, which has at times fought with U.S. forces and has been blamed for attacks on the police, on Sunnis, and on other Shiites, to observe a cease-fire. He extended it indefinitely a year later and also ordered most members of the milita to disarm.

Bibliography: See biography by P. Cockburn (2008).

Amal (Arabic ‘hope’, in full Afwaj al-Muqawamaal-Lubnaniyya ‘Masses of the Lebanese Resistance’) Lebanese Shi'ite political movement. Amal was established (1974) by Musa Sadr to press for greater Shi'ite political representation in Lebanon. In 1982, it split into extremist and moderate groups. Backed variously by Syria and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), its members have perpetrated a number of terrorist acts, such as the kidnappings in Lebanon during the 1980s. In 1991, the Lebanese National Assembly decreed the dissolution of all militias and the Amal moderated their stance.