Ali Sistani

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (born 1930 in Iran) is an Islamic cleric and the spiritual leader of Iraq's 24 million Shiite Muslims.

''Sistani has abstained from personally delivering public addresses and shunned media contacts. As a result, quotations pertaining to him are from secondary sources which were made available through interlocutors, aides, and so forth''.

Asceticism

 * People are not finding potable water and you're bringing me juice? No.
 * What Sistani Wants February 2006.

Fatwa against Israeli goods

 * It is not permissible for a Muslim to buy products of the countries that are in a state of war with Islam and Muslims, for example, Israel.
 * Ayatullah as-Sayyid Ali as-Seestani (Iraq).

Former Baathists

 * Sistani's office refuses the replacement of the law [which excludes former Baath Party members from returning to public life] because it is not an Iraqi demand but it is a political demand to please some sides.

New Iraqi constitution

 * Mr. Bremer, you are an American and I am an Iranian. I suggest we leave it up to the Iraqis to devise their constitution.
 * http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/16/opinion/oe-cockburn16.


 * The council that will write the constitution should be elected, not hand-picked ... The constitution will be illegal if it is written by a council, whether that is chosen by the Americans or by what is called the Governing Council or by anyone else.

Quotes about Sistani

 * Iraq — the country identified in American minds with chaos and endless warfare — is a democracy. Citizens vote, and leaders must respond to their demands; otherwise, they won’t be reelected. It’s a deeply flawed democracy, to be sure, as Salih is the first to note. Yet its institutions, created after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, have endured. Iraqis routinely take to the streets to demonstrate. The country’s top religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who acts as an unofficial political arbiter, has persistently supported democratic institutions, as well as serving as a locus of Iraqi nationalism... We can let Iraq succumb entirely to Iranian influence — or we can reengage with the country, showing Iraqis that we stand with them and take their democratic aspirations seriously. There is an opportunity here that we shouldn’t miss.
 * Christian Caryl, "Iraq’s president explains why the U.S. must reengage with Baghdad" (20 March 2019), The Washington Post


 * I was sleeping in a village near Basra that night ... I saw the villagers grabbing their guns and preparing to rush to Najaf, hundreds of miles away. 'Sistani is under attack,' they told me. That was all they needed to know. The same thing happened all over Iraq.
 * One of Sistani's advisors, reported in Andrew M. Cockburn, "U.S. Ignores This Ayatollah in Iraq at Its Own Peril" (November 16, 2003).