Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum

Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum ( Arabic محمد بحر العلوم, DMG Muḥammad Baḥr al-ʿUlūm ; * December 17, 1927 in Najaf ; † April 7, 2015 ibid) was a Shiite cleric from Najaf in Iraq .

Al-Ulum was a political opponent of the secular Ba'ath party leader and dictator Saddam Hussein . During the period in which he was also a member of the Islamic society Jama'at al-Ulama , he studied under Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim and had close ties to the Dawa party . In 1969 he fled Iraq with Muhsin al-Hakim's son Muhammad Mahdi al-Hakim . He later moved to London . He was elected to the Presidential Council of the Iraqi National Congress in 1992, but resigned in May 1995. Eventually he teamed up with the al-Choe'i charitable foundation . During his exile , he worked to end Saddam Hussein's rule and establish a democracy in Iraq instead .

When Saddam Hussein was overthrown, Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, despite his skepticism about US motives for overthrowing Hussein, became a member of the rotating nine-member presidium of the Iraqi Government Council and was President of the Government Council from July 13, 2003 to August 1 . After the bomb attack in Najaf on August 30, 2003, in which al-Ulum's friend Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim was killed, he resigned in protest against the failure to establish law and order. He later returned to the government council and was President of the council from March 1, 2004 to April 1.

Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum was the father of the Iraqi oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum .

literature

• Karl-Heinrich Göbel: Modern Shiite Politics and State Idea . Leske + Budrich, 1984, ISBN 3-8100-0438-3 .
• Phebe Marr: The Modern History of Iraq . Westview Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8133-3615-5 .
• Michael M. Gunter: The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis . St. Martin's Press, 1999, ISBN 0-312-21896-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Iraqi cleric, politician dies at 88 after long illness