Under his religious leadership, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has been committed to moderation and has treated with tact and wisdom the situation in Iraq, which may ignite with each crisis, small or large. However, it gradually became apparent that Sistani’s behavior does not appeal to some Islamist currents, because he did not succumb to their political agenda.

Sistani has been heavily criticized by some Sunni and Shiite parties for not supporting resistance movements against the Americans when they were in Iraq and for not entering the sectarian conflict in favor of one side against another. But these criticisms were usually directed at him by Islamist parties or groups from outside the religious establishment. This time, however, the criticism is coming from within the religious establishment, and from those in the same Islamist trend.

Sheikh Mohammed al-Yacoubi, the religious leader of the Al-Fadilah (Virtue) Party, which is part of the Iraqi government, has scathingly attacked Sistani in a series of speeches over the past month. Yacoubi considered Sistani hostile to what’s right, called him the pharaoh of the times and considered his positions a betrayal of the Shiites.

The reason for all this is that Sistani did not cave to the demands of religious parties to establish a religious state applying Sharia in Iraq. Sistani had recently rejected the Jaafari personal status law because it included violations of human rights, rights of other sects and rights of religious minorities.