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10000 Shiites Mourn In Najaf Some 10000

Juan Cole 10/04/2003

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10,000 Shiites Mourn in Najaf

Some 10,000 mourners (other reports say more) showed up in Najaf for the 40-day commemoration of the assassination of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim on Friday. The brother and successor of the deceased, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, used the occasion to insist that the drafters of the new Iraqi constitution be elected rather than appointed. He also criticized poor policing in contemporary Iraq, saying that the political parties should be allowed instead to deploy their paramilitaries in order to keep order. Al-Hakim’s Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq maintains a militia, the Badr Brigade, which helped keep order at the commemoration on Friday, along with Jalal Talabani’s peshmergas from the Kurdish PUK.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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