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so there could be some positive changes in Shi'a Islam as its center of gravity shifts west towards Iraqhttp://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/iraq/5641982.htm">Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/16/2003 | Shiite changes in the works Hussein's fall has diminished Iran's influence on the sect. Analysts see U.S.-friendly leaders emerging.
By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Knight Ridder News Service

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For a quarter of a century, Iran and its top religious leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, have defined Shiite Islam for its 120 million followers and for the world. But the liberation of Najaf, Shiite Islam's holiest city, by U.S. forces in Iraq threatens to weaken Iran's influence.

Theologians and analysts say a new Arab Shiite face may emerge, represented by spiritual leaders prepared to be friendly to the United States so long as President Bush leaves Iraq to the Iraqis.

Since Iran's Islamic revolution brought Khomeini to power in 1979, this minority Muslim sect has been harsh and anti-Western, advocating the destruction of Israel, seeking to export the revolution to Lebanon and elsewhere, sponsoring terrorism and assassinations, and pledging allegiance to a single, supreme leader.

A shift is palpable in Iran's holy city of Qom, where clerics feel the pull of a Najaf that's no longer under the thumb of a tyrant in Baghdad. Thousands of religious teachers and students, as well as several important ayatollahs, are talking about relocating to the central Iraqi city, about 100 miles south of Baghdad

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A silenced majority

Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraq's 24 million people.

Exiled Iraqi religious leaders who fled to Qom over the last three decades to escape the tyranny of Hussein are abuzz with the comings and goings of the revered Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who was kept under house arrest by the Iraqi president for 15 years. On Monday, armed supporters rushed to Najaf to rescue Sistani after a rival faction threatened to kill him.

"Shiites worldwide are going to shift their view to Najaf," moderate Iraqi Shiite leader Abdel Majid al Khoei said by satellite phone from Najaf on April 8. "The holy city will be as prominent as it was before" Hussein's reign, the pro-Western cleric predicted. Two days later, he was slain in a melee at Shiite Islam's holiest shrine. A second Shiite cleric also was killed.

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The shrines of its two most revered imams, the Shiite successors to the Prophet Mohammed, are in Najaf and nearby Karbala. Shiite Islam's oldest hoezeh, or seminary, was established in Najaf more than 1,300 years ago. Qom in Iran is a relative latecomer, founded in the ninth century with Fatima, the sister of an imam, enshrined there.
Najaf's reemergence could offer a freer voice to Shiite theologians, especially those who don't accept Khomeini's concept of a single supreme Shiite ruler.
"It's only natural when there is freedom that it's much easier to express yourself in a much louder voice," said Lebanon's Grand Ayatollah Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of the sect's senior religious authorities and the onetime spiritual leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. "But the question is, can we be sure that there will be freedom in Iraq following the fall of Saddam?" His fear, shared by other Shiite leaders, is of American interference.

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