Najaf Seminary and the Challenges of Civil State in Iraq

The present study aims at investigating Najaf seminary center and the challenges of the civil state in Iraq. The research method is descriptive-analytical and we used interview as the tool for gathering data. To do so, we had a dialogue with a considerable number of religious authorities, mujtahids and educators of seminary about the most important components of civil state. The results showed that many of the clerics in Najaf seminary acknowledge the hegemony of the thought of the great Sheikh’s pupils over that seminary and analyze the present seminary in Najaf as the extension to that thought. In this way, they maintain that this seminary’s opposition to establishment of a Shiite government in Iraq is a foundational opposition. Most of them favored a civil state or parliament system based on constitutional law and considered Ayatollah Sistani’s defense of it as the last word in that seminary. Of course, the scholars and clerics in Najaf refrained from using the term ‘secular state’, and it seems they consider it inconsistent with the religious doctrines. Accordingly, they used the very term of ‘civil state’. The clerics in Najaf insisted on the concept of ‘citizenship’ – containing the legal rights and obligations – as the most important common factor among the ethnic and religious group in Iraq. The Najaf clerics’ answer regarding the causes for encouraging the Shiites to take part – along with other inhabitants of Iraq – in establishing a government has less religious motivation. In answering the question on why the clerics in Najaf do not demand a Shiite government, most of them prefer to use the phrase ‘not necessary’.