Friday, September 22, 2006
Demand for Saddam's return to power
Politics
Some 3,000 people demonstrated in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown on Friday, demanding his return to power, organisers said. The crowd gathered before a mosque in Tikrit at the behest of two religious organisations, the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) and the Tikrit Shura Council.
COMMENT: The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) is a group of Sunni Muslim religious leaders in Iraq. It is also known as the Ulema Council - Ulema is the community of legal scholars of Islam and the Sharia. It has many activities on the political, social, economic, and religious levels. Even though it has an Islamist face and name, the association still has strong Baathist ideology as all the founding members were former mosque preachers, who under Saddam were appointed by the state in reward for the allegiance and commitment to the dictator state. The Ulema Council had called for calm among its followers in the face of provocations from some Shias. They also accuse neighbouring Shia-dominated Iran of trying to fuel growing religious tensions in the country by reaching out to Moqtada al-Sadr. Sunni clerics in the Muslim Ulema Council became increasingly vocal and teamed up with some influential Shias to oppose the occupation. COMMENT ENDS.
