[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] So I'm sorry I haven't bought copies of the book with me. I've been travelling.
Um, but the good news is the book is available for free online if you don't mind reading soft copy.
So there's an Arabic version as well. For those who prefer to read the original, not the original, the translated Arabic.
And I've been told there's a Farsi version that's been published a few months ago in Iran as well.
Um, but it is an easy read, uh, 100 and something pages, not very long.
And, um, I welcome all feedback. So hopefully those of you who, uh, have not had a chance yet to read the book will do so and find it useful.
So. I'll give you a little bit background of why I wanted to publish, um, a book on Alice's side.
And first off, I, I actually can't find a book about him in English.
It doesn't exist so far.
Um, and I, I wanted to write because I have collected things over the years, uh, about him, about his background, about his influence in Iraq.
But I thought I would like to to share it with other people concerned with how Iraqi
politics works and what the role of a 94 year old man in Najaf who hardly leaves his house,
uh, is because it does come up frequently when I talk to ambassadors who've just arrived in Baghdad, for example,
when I'm asked to talk about Shia politics, people always tell me, you know what Sistani's role, you know, why is he important and why is he relevant?
How do we reach in order to connect with him? And so I could save myself some time.
If I write a book, then hopefully that deals with 50% of these questions at least.
But in the, um, in the book itself, I make a central assertion.
Uh, they call that a hypothesis, if you want.
And, uh, and in academia, I guess that's, you know, what's relevant.
But the assertion that I make is that Sistani is the most influential.
Shia religious authority figure over the last four centuries, and I base that on the fact that he is not just a religious figure.
He's also a political actor. So that's a maybe a sub assertion there.
And people find that, um, quite difficult to grasp.
How can you be a political figure but you don't get involved in politics?
He doesn't have a party. He doesn't have an official position.
He does not have a state the way that, for example, the pope, uh, is recognised.
So how how is it that you can claim that he is a political act? And so the book sets out to make this clear, his influence on politics.
And, uh, we use this sort of a framework, very, uh, basic framework of, um, Webers, uh, views on capital and authority and then also,
uh, Bordeaux's views of, you know, the type of, um, authority that somebody like Sistani could play.
So in those kind of frameworks, I'm able to assess, is he a political player?
How does he exert his political capital and political authority?
Can I say he is a religious figure with informal political authority?
So that's the assertion that I was testing out in the book.
And I'd like to think, um, because it made a, you know, a good effort of, uh, backing up this assertion with some evidence on that.
The book starts off with the question of authority in Islam.
Does God does Islam prescribe a method of government?
Does it say we need to have an Islamic government? Does it say we need to have a monarchy or we need to have democracy, or we to have a theocracy?
And I don't take too much time in the book to explain that.
But I say there is an argument and a lot of people from the Najafi school, from, from Iraq, from that tradition say,
actually, God wants us to have a just society, but how do we achieve that is left to people themselves?
You can do that through a monarchy, the just monarch, very rare, but theoretically possible.
You can do that through democracy. You can do that through autocracy as long as you achieve justice.
That's the goal here. The method is up to people to choose. So that's an argument.
That is one stream of thought that I, uh, and I outline that in the book.
But of course, the revolutionary strand within Shia Islam at least this is actually.
No, you cannot just depend on any system to try to achieve justice.
And in fact, we have been prescribed with a method.
And the method is to rely on people who understand Islam the most, to be able to achieve that justice and to have an Islamic system.
That's why Prophet's Watson, and that's why we have the imams,
because they're the ones who are trying to teach society how to organise themselves in the most just manner, which in their view, is through Islam.
And that revolutionary strand also has evidence and also makes arguments that are convincing about how to achieve,
uh, this method of Islamic government. And then who is going to head this type of government?
So the first line of thoughts as well, people should decide they can have laymen, they can have a, uh, expert in politics.
They can have, if needs be, a cleric and Islamic cleric if they want to.
But it's people's choice. And the second line of thought says, well, no, no, the experts in Islam are the ones who should head the government as well.
So they explain to us how a government operates, but then they actually do the running of the government.
And of course, that's the School of Hawaii,
which says that the most capable people of running an Islamic government are the ones who understand some the most.
We shouldn't trust anybody to run the government.
We should trust the clerics, the ones who dedicated their lives to studying this stuff, to apply Islam in the best manner possible.
So you can see immediately there's going to be friction between these two schools of thought.
If they ever managed to get to power, how are they going to conduct political affairs?
One is going to say, well, actually, we're not really going to get involved too much because we're concerned with outcomes.
And the other one is to say, no, no, we want to get power. We want to prescribe to people how to, uh, conduct their affairs.
And then we're going to run those affairs for them as well. And that is on the back of, um, sort of an older argument about divine authority.
We have the prophets had the imams. They're not with us right now.
So who is God's representative on earth?
The revolutionary school believes that God's representative is the cleric.
He is now in place of the Imam. He has the authority of the prophet.
His job is to act as courts representative enough and so it is a divine requirement.
It is an obligation for the cleric to behave as if the imams were here,
as if the prophet was to run in the central government to run an Islamic state.
If they have the opportunity to do so. And of course, that conflicts with the other school for that says, well, prophet is not here.
The Imam is not here right now. It's not really our job to do anything more than guide in place.
So you can see one side is already going to use divine authority to back up its vision and its actions,
whereas the other is much more fearful of trying to use divine authority in that way.
And that's what we have in terms of friction with regard to the, uh, you know,
the jurists having this authority to act as a guardian for all people versus the much more limited one which says,
well, only in religious affairs, only when people come to us and ask us about Islamic rulings do we have authority.
Apart from that, we don't really have the authority to extend all the way into people's daily lives.
So you can see already how much more challenging that situation can be between the two, uh, schools of thought.
So that's the beginning of the book. That's the background to why I've looked at this subject, because it is a thorny issue.
And of course, we have, uh, Iraq and Iran in these last 3 or 4 decades of being, uh, the centre of what has happened in the Middle East.
Islamic Revolution, 1979, a war between Iraq and Iran next to 82, 88.
Let's go for the second. Go for rights of life.
You know, so many things have occurred in these two countries and probably still will in the next few years.
So I thought a study of one of the key figures in this period of time would contribute something on the subject of not just Shia political thought,
but of general, uh, political approaches in Iraq and Iran, at least in these past two decades.
So then I move on to a study of Sistani sistani's, a biography of his upbringing, his background.
Uh, the formative years, how he was sheets in terms of his views and what were the major influences.
What is it that he experienced in his younger years in the 40s and 50s into the 60s, that then prepared him,
if they did at all, prepared for him to be this most important and relevant figure in Iraq and in the Middle East.
And part of that is his experience in home when he studied for still two years of form under.
Uh, one of the great achievements of the time I seen for Georgie, and he was in competition with the Shah at the time for influence and authority,
and yet managed to protect the House of Commons, strengthen it,
despite the fact that the Shah himself was becoming increasingly hostile to to took on itself.
I think that left a mark on Sistani. It also meant that he had something to fall back on when he went through a similar experience.
Uh, especially during the 90s when Saddam was in power and trying to limit, uh,
the influence of the how the Sistani had an experience to fall back on something that shaped his his way of dealing with with the regime in Iraq,
but also highlighting the bitter experience that he had, particularly the 80s and 90s seeing colleagues,
friends, persecuted, exiled, executed, seeing the House as shrink in size to 10% of its original size.
Thousands of clerics would be forced into exile or leave the house,
and got to a point where there was maybe 6 or 7, 800 clerics, down from all over 10,000,
to a point where people think it is the houses that actually survive and in people's lives in Iraq,
the house, it became less and less relevant, right?
People were so afraid of the regime, so afraid of regime spies.
There was no Friday prayers. There was no statements issued by any of the of the religious authorities you could even struggle to visit.
It's very difficult to access, um, clerics in particular, in those dark days, in 93, 94, 95, it became very difficult for people.
And so the question was, will this system ever survive?
It is a thousand year old institution, but the best regime has got it in the chokehold.
And yet it was significantly changed with 2003 suddenly a system that not many people
outside of Iraq or familiar with was going to play a significant role in Iraq,
which people did not expect. And I don't think at one anyone point in time.
President at the time, Bush was told that we need to consider what I from the society thinks about the post 2003 order.
I don't think it. It was never issued, and he was never issued with any instructions or information, or even knew the name Sistani before April 2003.
And I would say this is also the same for even Iraqi political figures.
I don't think they ever considered what would be the importance of Sistani was his views on how Iraq should be reorganised post 2003.
So it came as a huge shock to them when suddenly people inside Iraq, but also this old man in Najaf,
started to issue statements and encouraged people to have views on the post 2003.
It was a massive shock and the people listened to him and people were willing to protest on the street and willing,
and politicians were suddenly afraid to agree with America if they did not consult textbooks
this time and explain why that happened and how he managed to get into that position,
and why he suddenly went from being a very quiet, very reserved,
classical religious figure to suddenly somebody who was able to write a letter to the UN
Security Council and defy George W Bush and ask people to protest against programmer's wishes,
to write the Constitution essentially himself.
So that transformation, I documented detail how he managed to do that in the space of, you know, a few months,
essentially going from somebody who many people had never heard of to suddenly somebody whose future was dependent on.
And obviously his his actions, what he did, but also what he did not do.
Why did he support a particular party or group?
Why did he not tell us what to do? People always criticised him for that.
Okay, yeah, he was influential. But why didn't he tell us what to do? What should we have done right then and there?
So there were always times where son did something by not doing something.
Refusing to praise or condemn or prescribe a particular thing.
Not getting involved at certain points in time.
And one of those, I think is less how important was points in 2006 where we could have had a a massive civil war?
The events of February 2006, there was, uh, the attack against the shrine in Samarra,
and suddenly there were essentially recommendations from gangs and militias who were threatening entire neighbourhoods,
uh, to the north of Iraq, blowing to the south. Um, the death rate went up by 100.
They would be headless bodies, bodies with bullet holes lying everywhere throughout residential areas and Baghdad and elsewhere.
And at that point in time, Sistani could have pushed for the creation of militias or forces that were going to defend the shrines.
He could have issued a fatwa saying Shia muslims have been talking about targeting to, you know, defend themselves and push back.
He could have essentially asked that his community take a stranglehold over the country.
The community that he represents, that he has authority over who make up physically the majority of Iraq.
He could have made that step, but he chose not.
And instead he actually started referring people to the fact that we need to avoid losing control of rule of law.
State must control arms. We should not have militias.
We need to treat other sects as our brothers and as a equals.
This Iraq has to be multi-faith. So sometimes it was things that he did not do.
But I think also important that I make an effort of highlighting those instances.
But then also I think where his ambition met with disappointment, what he wanted for Iraq post 2003.
What he wanted to achieve, having the Shia being in control in Iraq for the first time in in forever,
and then being able to rule and govern in a way that would be a beacon for other communities.
The Shia majority in Bahrain this year, a majority in Iran this year, a majority, not a majority, but a couple large numbers in Lebanon and elsewhere.
They may achieve political power. How would they govern themselves?
How would they come into those territories and those countries? And I think he hoped that Iraq would be an example of best practice.
But he was disappointed with the performance of the politicians.
He refused to be involved in formal politics, refused to have a role for himself, and also for people who were connected to clerics.
We're not supposed to be in political office.
He stated that multiple times, and so people thought, you know, him or people connected to him are the most people most trustworthy.
But they were removing themselves from the situation. So we'd have to go with the regular laymen, the politicians.
And he had hope that they would perform better.
But unfortunately they got sucked up with corruption, with self-interests, using sectarianism to try to one up each other.
And when they got to positions of power, despite his frequent criticisms, instructions, pressure,
they were not prepared to do any better than politicians they would had on the previous regime.
That's it. And so Sistani became increasingly disheartened that actually this political elite is not going to be able to reform.
And he got to a point where he believed his words were no longer having an effect, and he was losing his capital in that.
And so he decided to go into what I describe as semi-retirement to stop commenting on political affairs, refused to meet with Iraqi politicians,
and generally just retreated in order to preserve some of the capital that he had amongst the public,
but also in order in order to say, well, people chose these politicians, I didn't ask them to vote for them.
I've repeatedly said we should vote for reformers.
I've given out instructions that people need to vote responsibly.
I mean, Iraqi society doesn't seem mature enough yet. They're still voting along ethno sectarian lines.
They still consider identity more important than policy.
And the parties themselves are not very mature either. They all control weapons and money and territory, and they're in it for power.
They're not really interested in governing, per se. They're interested in holding power.
And so I think Sistani's massive disappointment with the Iraqi political leadership has
meant that we've missed out on a lot that we could have had from him in terms of a vision,
more on his vision, uh, more guidance, um,
something that we could then hold on to for the next 50 to 100 years to say, well,
here's a version of Shia Islam that is different from Iran that also has a role in politics, but that is not going to be involved in the same way.
And it works and it's respectful.
But we unfortunately don't get to see that because of the way the Iraqi political leaders behave themselves after 2003.
And so we've reached a point where I just thought, he is 94 heading into his 95th year.
And, you know, people describe these years as sort of legacy mode. You know, he wants to preserve a legacy.
He wants to leave something behind in order for future generations to be able to build on.
And I'd say that Sistani has been very successful in this regard.
House of the 90s, that had six, 700 dogs and students, now has almost 20,000 houses that was dependent on people's arms and charity in the 60s,
70s and 80s now has massive institutions that are able to funding the House of the,
uh, was wary of being infiltrated by the state and could not protect its own members.
Now has a very respectable, very, um, very recognised position within the country.
That means it's it's on the outlook to be even stronger going forward.
But what I say, Sistani's most important achievement in that regard is the Sistani paradigm,
which I describe as this playbook that he's left for future ayatollahs in Iraq.
Whoever follows him in the next decades now has a way in which he needs to behave.
Don't get too involved in politics, but also don't completely ignore.
Be prepared to guide. Be prepared to intervene when the need arises.
For example, in 2014, the price of lysis or in other occasions way in 2019, for example,
asking the Prime Minister to resign because of protest and how you do that.
Avoid allowing yourself with any political party, right.
Preserve your political capital. Uh, this there is, uh, a whole set of examples that I give that make up this standard paradigm.
And I think that is going to be very useful for future ayatollahs in Iraq to say, well, this is the way she started.
This is how we dealt with these challenges. This is the way we should also be.
And I think it's not just the guidebook. I think it's going to be a rulebook.
Any ayatollah who does not follow the Sistani way of doing things is not going to get a chance to become a grand ayatollah in Iran,
because he will be excluded from succession, because he does not follow the way that Sistani is laid down for, for future marriage.
People will ask frequently about the period after Sistani when he's gone, what happens?
How is it not on the terms? And it's not like in the Vatican, where there's a voting process.
How does it work and who's likely to be successful? What will Iran do?
What they choose to influence the process and, uh, maybe find somebody who is very pro Iran to be in, in that, um, in that succession process.
Um, what happens if the Iraqi state changes becomes a more authoritarian system or, uh, the Shia lose their political power in Iraq?
What happens to to the house of that?
Uh, the questions that I think are relevant, but institutionally, the house of knowledge of the school of Najaf, I think is is very strong now.
It has financial capability. It has a tried and tested political experience.
It has a way of differentiating itself from the system in Iran that is well respected.
It has, I think, uh, numerous names for potential successors.
So it is in the period of the 90s where we saw very few accidents or people that could become successors through the previous acts locally.
I think now there are many more potential successors, but also I think it is it is in a healthy position.
It is established a niche for itself, that it is not going to be challenged in any way.
It is not involved in politics formally. So the state can set up to ban or push out or defeat the House.
In that sense, it doesn't need any money from any, but it has enough membership to produce future generations.
Uh, it has control of important institutions like the shrines.
And more importantly, it has respect for people, particularly the Iraqi people they respect.
I say they respect the House. They look to it for guidance even today.
And I think, you know, some of you have seen the Pope's visit in 2021 to, uh,
for example, the pope went out of his way to to visit Sistani in his house.
And I think that was a a significant moment of not just respect, but a recognition of this ascetic, pious old man has done something remarkable.
He was able to exert influence without seeking power for himself,
and has actually bettered his people in his community without having the usual, uh, you know, disadvantage of that of power.
And I think that was a moment that reflected the status not just of Sistani, but of nature itself.
And so from that position, I'm quite positive that even though we will lose, I still see somebody who is significant, hugely significant.
But I'm actually hopeful of what is left always going to leave behind.
So the book doesn't sort of pinpoint exactly who who, um, the, you know, the details of the process of succession.
More importantly, I focus on the fact that succession should be not one of crisis.
It is likely to be a healthy succession. So I will probably wrap up here.
Um, maybe I made assumptions that, um, I'm familiar with the terms I learned much.
Um, I met Jeff in housing, but, um, I look forward to the discussion.
I do hope, uh, you'll get a chance to to read the book.
Um, and I, I'm very pleasantly surprised.
It was interesting, um, that, uh, you have read it, and people do want to hear a little bit more about it and, uh, engaging with you.
Thank you.