Robert Fisk: The Grandson of the Cleric Who Led the Insurrection Against the British in 1920 Speaks Out

Robert Fisk, in the Independent (July 12, 2004):

The Americans could learn a lot from Sheikh Jouwad Mehdi Al-Khalasi. A tall, distinguished man who speaks with eloquence and humor, he has the same forehead and piercing eyes of his grandfather - the man who led the Shiite Muslim insurrection against British occupation in 1920.

He brings out a portrait of the grand old revolutionary, who has a fluffy but carefully combed white beard. One of the most eminent scholars of his day, he ended his life in exile, negotiating with Lenin's Bolshevik government and dying mysteriously - poisoned, his supporters believed, by British intelligence. Sheikh Jouwad's shoulders shake with laughter when I suggest that there are more than a few parallels between the Iraqi insurrections of 1920 and 2004."Exactly", he says.

"In 1920, the British tried to introduce an Iraqi government in name only - it looks like a copy of UN Security Council Resolution 1546. Sheikh Mehdi Al-Khalasi had become the grand 'marja' (the leading Shiite scholar) after the death of Mohamed Al-Shiazi and he issued a fatwa telling his followers and all Shiites in Iraq not to participate in elections, not to give legitimacy to a government established by occupation forces.

"Not only the Shiites responded to it but the Sunnis and the Jewish, Christian and other minorities as well. The elections failed and so the British forced my grandfather to leave Iraq. They arrested him at his home on the other side of this religious school where we are today - a home which many years later Saddam Hussein deliberately destroyed." It was a familiar colonial pattern, of course. The Brits were exiling troublesome clerics - Archbishop Makarios comes to mind - throughout the 20th century, but Sheikh Mehdi turned out to be as dangerous to the British abroad as he had been at home. He was transported to Bombay, but so great was the crowd of angry Indian Muslims who arrived at the port that British troops kept him aboard ship and then transported him to the hot, volcanic port of Aden.

"He said to the British: 'You don't know where to send me, but since the pilgrimage season is close, I want to go on the 'Haj' to Makkah.' Now, when Sharif Hussein, the ruler, heard this, he sent an invitation for my grandfather to attend the 'Haj'. He met Sharif Hussein on Arafat Mountain at Makkah. And then he received an invitation to go to Iran, signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed Mossadeq. And in Iran, waiting for him, were many religious leaders from Najaf." Thirty years later, the Americans would topple Mossadeq's Iranian government, with help from Col. Monty Woodhouse of MI6. Sheikh Jouwad uses his hands when he talks - Shiite prelates are far more expressive with their hands than Anglican clergymen - and each new episode in his grandfather's life produces a pointed finger.

"When Sheikh Mehdi Al-Khalasi arrived at the Iranian port of Bushehr, he received a big welcome but an official of the Iranian Oil Company fired 10 bullets at him. Many people said at the time that this was a plot by Col. Wilson, who had been the head of the British occupation in Iraq in 1920. All the great religious leaders from Qom in Iran were waiting for him - Al-Naini and Al-Asfahani, Sheikh Abdulhalim Al-Hoeri Al-Yezdi, who was the professor of the future Ayatollah Khomeini - and then King Faisal, who the British had set up in Baghdad, announced that exiled religious leaders could return to Iraq, providing they promised not to interfere in politics."

Sheikh Mehdi angrily dismissed the invitation as"an attack on our role as religious leaders and on the independence of Iraq." Instead, he traveled to the northeastern Iranian city of Mashad where he established an assembly"to protect the holy places of Iraq," publishing treatises in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Russian and Turkish....