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The Iraqi National Foundation Congress (INFC) is a civil society movement in Iraq. It was set up following the 2003 invasion of Iraq to offer a peaceful protest to the ongoing occupation of the country and press for a united Iraq, and explicitly eschews violence in its methodology.
The congress was founded Saturday, 8 May 2004 by Sheikh Jawad al-Khalisi. A Shia, Al-Khalisi is the Imam of Al-Khadhimiya mosque in northern Baghdad. The group's spokesperson is Dr. Wamidh Nadhmi, a senior political scientist at Baghdad University. [1]
The membership of the congress is diverse, including woman's rights groups, religious groups and nationalists. They include Nasserites, leftists and Ba'athists from the era before Saddam, as well as Kurds, Christians, representatives of the powerful Sunni movement the Association of Muslim Scholars, which has close links with Falluja and other strongly anti-American cities, and Sheikh Khalisi's own Shia friends and colleagues. [2] [3]
Whilst favouring elections, the INFC boycotted popular polls held in Iraq in 2005, stating that it would be wrong to participate whilst 'under occupation' and whilst crimes are being committed against the Iraqi people, "especially the savage massacres in Falluja". [4] As a result of this the group itself has yet to achieve any democratic legitimacy at the ballot box. Their attitude is summed up by the closing statement of their 2005 congressional session:
Long live free and independent Iraq, with sovereignty intact. Long live inclusive, resolute Iraqi unity. [5]
The group actively attempts to move beyond the sectarianism that is rife in Iraqi society post-invasion, expressed through their re-adoption of communal prayer across religious groups. [6] The 2005 congressional session also states the commitment to 'Arab-Kurdish brotherhood', and that "it upholds the unity of Iraq as a people and territory, and its Islamic-Arabic identity in cultural non-ethnic terms". [5] Commenting to Al-jazeera on an attack that killed 75 people at a Shia mosque, Al-Khalisi said:
The people behind the explosions seek to create sectarian strife between the people of Iraq. However, Iraqis will never allow this to happen. [7]
INFC do however uphold the right of armed resistance to occupation, but condemn the targeting of Iraqis and the taking of hostages as a tactic. [8]
With regard to the Israel–Palestine issue, the INFC adopts a hardline position. The 2005 congressional session states that 'It [INFC] rejects the establishment of any political or normalisation links with the Zionist, usurper settler entity'. It also makes reference to "US-imperialist and Zionist plans to impose its will on humanity". [5]
Muqtada al-Sadr is a Shiite cleric, Iraqi politician and militia leader. He is the leader of the Sadrist Movement and the leader of the Peace Companies, a successor to the militia he had previously led during the American military presence in Iraq, the "Mahdi Army." In 2018, he joined his Sadrist political party to the Saairun alliance, which won the highest number of seats in the 2018 and 2021 Iraqi parliamentary elections. Al-Sadr is suspected in US news media of having ordered the assassination of rivalling Shia leader Abdul-Majid al-Khoei in 2003, a charge he denies and which remains unproven.
Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani, commonly known as Ayatollah Sistani, is an Iranian–Iraqi Twelver Shia Ayatollah and marja'. He has been described as the spiritual leader of Shia Muslims worldwide, and one of the most senior scholars in Shia Islam. He has been included in all editions of "The Muslim 500: The World's Most Influential Muslims" mostly in the top ten positions since 2009. Sistani ranks ninth in 2023. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and 2005.
The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq is a group of religious leaders in Iraq. It was formed on the April 14, 2003, four days after the U.S.-led invasion demolished the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein, by a group of scholars who aimed to represent Sunnis in Iraq. Though not a political party, the association is considered to be politically influential. It also administers a charitable fund set up for the upkeep of religious buildings.
Events in the year 2005 in Iraq.
The Iraqi civil war was a civil war fought mainly between the Iraqi government along with American-led coalition forces and various sectarian armed groups, mainly Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Mahdi Army, from 2006 to 2008. In February 2006, sectarian tensions in Iraq escalated into a full-scale civil war after the bombing of the Al-Askari Shrine by the Sunni organization Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This set off a wave of reprisals by Shia militants on Sunni civilians, followed by Sunni counterattacks on Shia civilians. In 2006, the Secretary General of the United Nations declared that if patterns of discord and violence continued to prevail, the Iraqi state was in danger of breaking up. In a 10 January 2007 address to the American people, President George W. Bush stated that "80% of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles (48 km) of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shakes the confidence of all Iraqis.". The conflict escalated over the next several months until by late 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate described the conflict as having elements of a civil war. In 2008, during the Sunni Awakening and the U.S. troop surge, violence declined dramatically. However, an insurgency by Al-Qaeda in Iraq continued to plague Iraq following the U.S. withdrawal from the country in late 2011. In June 2014 the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the successor of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, launched a major military offensive in Iraq and declared a self-proclaimed worldwide Islamic caliphate, leading to a full-scale war mainly between Iraq and ISIL from 2013 to 2017 in which Iraq declared full victory against the terrorist group.
Parliamentary elections were held in Iraq on 15 December 2005, following the approval of a new constitution in a referendum of 15 October.
The 2006 al-Askari Shrine bombing occurred on 22 February 2006 at approximately 6:44 a.m. local Iraqi time, and targeted the al-Askari Shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq. The attack on the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, has not been claimed by any group; the then President of the United States, George W. Bush, suggested from "evidence" that the bombing was an al-Qaeda plot. Although the mosque was severely damaged from the blast, there were no casualties.
The Hayy Al-Jihad massacre occurred on July 9, 2006 in the Hayy Al-Jihad neighborhood of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. An estimated 40 Sunni civilians were killed in revenge attacks by Shia militiamen from the Mahdi Army for the previous unprovoked anti-Shiite killings.
The origin of Shia–Sunni relations can be traced back to a dispute over the succession to the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a caliph of the Islamic community. After the death of Muhammad in 632, a group of Muslims, who would come to be known as the Sunnis, believed that Muhammad's successor should be Abu Bakr, whereas a second group of Muslims, who would come to be known as the Shias, believed that his successor should have been Ali. This dispute spread across various parts of the Muslim world, which eventually led to the Battle of Jamal and Battle of Siffin. Sectarianism based on this historic dispute intensified greatly after the Battle of Karbala, in which Husayn ibn Ali and some of his close partisans, including members of his household, were killed by the ruling Umayyad Caliph Yazid I, and the outcry for revenge divided the early Islamic community, albeit disproportionately, into two groups, the Sunni and the Shia. This is known today as the Islamic schism.
The 2007 al-Askari mosque bombing occurred on 13 June 2007 at around 9 am local time at one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, the al-Askari Mosque, and has been attributed by Iran to the Iraqi Baath Party. While there were no injuries or deaths reported, the mosque's two ten-story minarets were destroyed in the attacks. This was the second bombing of the mosque, with the first bombing occurring on 22 February 2006 and destroying the mosque's golden dome.
Sheikh Jalal al-Din Ali al-Sagheer is an Iraqi politician and a former member of parliament in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Prior to the 2003 US-led Invasion of Iraq he was the chairman of the Paris Mosque in France. He is the imam of the Shi'a Buratha Mosque in Baghdad.
The July 2010 Baghdad attacks were a series of bombings that involved a suicide bomber and other bomb attacks in Baghdad, Iraq, which killed at least 70 people while injuring 400 during a Shia pilgrimage to the mausoleum of Musa al-Kadhim. The bombings targeted those on the annual pilgrimage and took place from 6 to 8 July. The pilgrimage has been attacked in previous years by Sunni extremists and in 2005 was the site of a stampede that killed up to 1,000 people.
The 2012–2013 Iraqi protests started on 21 December 2012 following a raid on the home of Sunni Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi and the arrest of 10 of his bodyguards. Beginning in Fallujah, the protests afterwards spread throughout Sunni Arab parts of Iraq. The protests centered on the issue of the alleged sectarianism of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Pro-Maliki protests also took place throughout central and southern Iraq, where there is a Shia Arab majority. In April 2013, sectarian violence escalated after the 2013 Hawija clashes. The protests continued throughout 2013, and in December Maliki used security forces to forcefully close down the main protest camp in Ramadi, killing hundreds of civilian protesters in the process. Sunni groups, such as the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, took up arms in response, and joined forces with the General Military Council for Iraqi Revolutionaries (GMCIR), a militant group made up of former Ba'athists, to conduct a military campaign against the Iraqi government. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) would later grow out of this civil conflict, escalating into a full-scale war.
The 2013 Hawija clashes relate to a series of violent attacks within Iraq, as part of the 2012–2013 Iraqi protests and Iraqi insurgency post-U.S. withdrawal. On 23 April, an army raid against a protest encampment in the city of Hawija, west of Kirkuk, led to dozens of civilian deaths and the involvement of several insurgent groups in organized action against the government, leading to fears of a return to a wide-scale Sunni–Shia conflict within the country. By 27 April, more than 300 people were reported killed and scores more injured in one of the worst outbreaks of violence since the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011.
On 27 May 2013, a series of coordinated attacks occurred in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, killing 71 people and injuring more than 200 others.
On 10 June 2013, a series of coordinated bombings and shootings struck the central and northern parts of Iraq, killing at least 94 people and injuring 289 others.
The departure of US troops from Iraq in 2011 ended the period of occupation that had begun with the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. The time since U.S. withdrawal has been marked by a renewed Iraqi insurgency and by a spillover of the Syrian civil war into Iraq. By 2013, the insurgency escalated into a renewed war, the central government of Iraq being opposed by ISIL and various factions, primarily radical Sunni forces during the early phase of the conflict. The war ended in 2017 with an Iraqi government and allied victory, however ISIL continues a low-intensity insurgency in remote parts of the country.
Nimr Baqir al-Nimr was a Shia cleric and critic of the government in Saudi Arabia, who was beheaded on 2 January 2016, one of 47 people executed that day for terrorism offenses. Others executed included Sunnis who had been convicted of involvement in terror attacks linked to al-Qaeda which took place in 2003. News of the killings triggered international demonstrations, and condemnation by nations, supranational organizations, and human rights groups.
The persecution of Shia Muslims by the Islamic State refers to the persecution of Shia Muslims by the Islamic extremist group Islamic State (IS), which took place in Iraq, Syria, and other areas across the world.
On 7 July 2016, at least 56 people were killed and 75 injured after a group of attackers stormed the Mausoleum of Sayid Mohammed bin Ali al-Hadi, a Shia holy site in Balad, Iraq. The attackers included suicide car bombers, suicide bombers on foot, and several gunmen. They attacked Shia pilgrims celebrating Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. There were three suicide bombers, and one of them was killed by security personnel. There were other attackers too. ISIL also launched several mortars into the area.