By Gary Leupp
CounterPunch August 16, 2004

“Oppose the oppressor and support the oppressed.”
Imam Ali, Last Will and Testament (39 AH-661 CE)

I have been thinking for months that if those commanding U.S. forces in Iraq really wanted to perform the ultimate stupidity, and ratchet up exponentially the degree of hatred they face in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world—then they’d surely attack the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, or be drawn into a situation where they’d damage it. This is the most important Shiite site in the world, and is holy not only to Shiites (about 120 million people) but also to all the billion-plus Muslims on the planet. It sits atop the tomb of Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, fourth caliph (”successor” of Muhammed and political and religious leader of the expanding Muslim world), assassinated by opponents in 661. Ali’s partisans supported his son Hussein as next caliph, but Umayyad foes defeated Hussein and 72 followers in battle at Karbala in 680, their martyrdoms producing the enduring division between Sunni and Shia Islam.

Hussein is entombed, not with his father, but in Karbala. But according to Shiite tradition, an even more remarkable figure rests under the golden dome of the Ali Shrine: Adam, the first man. A son of Noah, who refused to enter the ark, died in Najaf, and here the patriarch Abraham and his son Isaac once bought a parcel of land now called the Valley of Peace. This is the sprawling Wadi al-Salaam cemetery (the world’s largest) that adjoins the shrine. Pilgrimage to Najaf will supposedly bring 70,000 Muslims immediate entry into Paradise. Najaf was home to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini for twelve years. It was a target of Saddam Hussein during the Shiite rebellion after the 1991 Gulf War, in which the first President Bush encouraged the Shiites to rise up, only to abandon them ignominiously. (In that episode the shrine was looted and bombed, although soon repaired by the Baathist regime.) Ayatollah Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr, Muqtada al-Sadr’s father, was assassinated here in 1999. In short, Najaf is a hub of mythology, tradition, and historical memories of injustice, resistance and martyrdom that inevitably affect its significance as a military target. Especially when Shiite resistance fighters take refuge there, and use it as a base of operations against unwelcome infidel troops.