Islamic Dawa Party

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The Islamic Dawa Party or Islamic Call Party (Arabic حزب الدعوة الإسلامية Hizb al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya) is, historically, a militant Shiite Islamic group and, presently, an Iraqi political party. Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq are two of the main parties in the religious-Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, which won a plurality of seats in both the provisional January 2005 Iraqi election and the longer-term December 2005 election. The party is led by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a physician, who served as the Prime Minister of Iraq in the Iraqi Transitional Government from 2005 until May 20, 2006. The party's deputy leader, Nouri al-Maliki, is the current Prime Minister of Iraq.

1 History
2 Ideology
3 Timeline
4 Transliterations
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

Al-Dawa was formed in the late 1950s by a group of Shi'ite leaders, with Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr, the uncle of Muqtada al-Sadr, playing a prominent role. Most academic scholars place its emergence as occurring in 1958, although according to al-Jihad (the Iraqi Islamic movement's weekly newspaper), the party was organized in October 1957.^[1] It was created to combat secularism, communism, and the Sunni regime , which were then ascendant in Iraq. It was founded and led by Shi'ites. Al-Dawa rose to prominence in the 1970s, when it waged an armed campaign against the Iraqi government. The Ba'thists initiated a crackdown on Shi'a political activism, driven in part by the secular nature of the Ba'thist ideology and in part by their view of a politicized Shi'a as a threat to the stability of the regime. During the 1970s, the Shi'a journal Risalat al-Islam was shut down, a number of religious educational institutions were closed, and a law was enacted that obligated Iraqi students of the hawza to undertake national military service. The Ba'thists then began specifically targeting al-Da'wa members, arresting and imprisoning them from 1972 onwards. In 1973, the alleged head of al-Da'wa's Baghdad branch was killed in prison, and one year later, 75 al-Da'wa members were arrested and sentenced to death by the Ba'thist revolutionary court.^[2] In 1975, the government canceled the annual procession from Najaf to Karbala (known as marad al-ras). Although subject to repressive measures throughout the 1970s, large-scale opposition to the government by al-Da'wa can really be traced to what became known as the Safar Intifada of February 1977. Despite the government's ban on the celebration of marad al-ras, al-Da'wa organized the procession in 1977, which was subsequently attacked by police.^[3] After this period it also interacted with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the future spiritual leader of Iran, during his exile in Najaf in Iraq. It supported the Islamic Revolution in Iran and in turn received support from the Iranian government, especially during the Iran-Iraq War. Despite this cooperation, al-Sadr's and Khomenei's visions of an Islamic Republic differed sharply in certain respects. While Khomeini argued the power of the state should rest with the ulema, al-Dawa supported the notion of power resting with the ummah. This disagreement was one factor that led to the formation of SCIRI as a separate group from al-Dawa. Al-Dawa claimed to have many Sunni members in the 1980's and coordinated with several Sunni Islamist groups at that stage.^[4] On March 31, 1980, the Saddam regime's Revolutionary Command Council passed a law sentencing to death all past and present members of the Da'wa party, its affiliated organizations, and people working for its goals. ^[5] This was soon followed by a renewed and relentless purge of alleged and actual party members, with estimates varying on the numbers executed due to the secretive nature of the Iraqi regime.

During the Iran-Iraq War, al-Dawa also committed violent acts against both Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq and Western Sunni targets. It was widely viewed in the West as a terrorist organization in this period. It attempted to assassinate Tariq Aziz, Hussein's longtime loyalist, in 1980; and attempted to assassinate Hussein himself in 1982 and 1987. In 1983 it simultaneously bombed the American and French embassies in Kuwait and several other domestic and foreign targets in Kuwait. This led to the imprisonment of the "Kuwait 17" in Kuwait, 12 of which were Iraqis in al-Dawa^[6]. The party would later claim that the perpetrators of these attacks were agents who had been "hijacked" by the intelligence directorate of Iran's revolutionary guards. In any case al-Daawa and its sympathizers make great efforts in distancing their movement and party from these violent acts.^[7] The bombing of the American embassy was an early instance of suicide bombing in the Middle East, following the examples that year of Hezbollah's alleged bombings of the American Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon. ^[8]

Freeing the al-Dawa prisoners in Kuwait was one of the main objectives of a string of kidnappings and bombings perpetrated by Hezbollah over the next several years. (One of the Kuwait 17, Mustafa Badreddin, is a relative and associate of Hezbollah leader Imad Mugniyah.^[9]) The Kuwait 17 then played a role in the Iran-Contra scandal: The principals of Iran-Contra offered to sway Kuwait to release the Kuwait 17 as one of several incentives to free American hostages in Iraq. However, when President Reagan learned of this offer, he allegedly responded "like he had been kicked in the belly." ^[10] The Kuwait 17 somehow gained freedom, possibly by escaping or by a prisoner exchange with Iran, when Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait in the prelude to the Persian Gulf War.^[11]

Most leaders of al-Dawa remained in exile in Iran and elsewhere until the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. During this period, some of its factions moved to SCIRI ^[12]. After the invasion, both al-Dawa and SCIRI returned to Iraq. Al-Dawa chose Nasariyah as its base of operations in Iraq and now essentially controls this city.

[edit] Ideology

The political ideology of al-Da'wa is heavily influenced by work done by Baqr al-Sadr who laid out four mandatory principles of governance in his 1975 work, Islamic Political System. These were:

Absolute sovereignty belongs to God.
Islamic injunctions are the basis of legislation. The legislative authority may enact any law not repugnant to Islam.
The people, as vice-regents of Allah, are entrusted with legislative and executive powers.
The jurist holding religious authority represents Islam. By confirming legislative and executive actions, he gives them legality." ^[13]

[edit] Timeline

1974 The Ba'thist revolutionary court arrested and sentenced to death 75 al-Dawa members.
1975 The annual pilgrimage from Najaf to Karbala, called the Marad al-Ras, was cancelled by the government.
1977 The Safar Intifada in February: Al-Dawa organized the Marad al-Ras, in spite of the government ban; The event was attacked by police.
1979 Iranian Revolution. Al-Dawa created a military wing, later called Shahid al-Sadr.
1980 On 30 March the Revolutionary Command Council retroactively banned al-Dawa; membership was made punishable by death. 96 al-Dawa members are allegedly executed this month.
1980 On 1 April al-Dawa carried out an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Tariq Aziz, Foreign Minister at the time.
1980 On 9 April Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister Amina Sadr bint al-Huda are arrested and executed.
1982 Al-Dawa failed in attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein. Heavy crack-downs on al-Dawa by Hussein's regime. Many flee to Iran, where it suffers from competition with SCIRI.
1983 On December 12, alleged al-Dawa members bombed the American and French embassies in Kuwait, the Kuwait airport, the main oil refinery in Kuwait, and a residential area for Raytheon employees. 17 suspects were soon arrested.
1987 Again Al-Dawa fails in an attempt to kill Saddam by attacking his motorcade.
1996 It is alleged that al-Dawa carried out the attempt on Saddam's son, Uday.
2003 After the Invasion of Iraq al-Dawa returned, basing itself in the city of Nasiriya which the party now runs and controls.
2005 The United Iraqi Alliance, triumphs in the December 2005 Elections.