Moqtada Al Sadr sparks controversy over Quran alteration comments

Comments create wave of discontent and claims that texts were dumped and burnt

Moqtada Al Sadr has claimed that the 'Quran was altered about 500 years ago'. Reuters

Iraqi populist Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr has sparked controversy for alleging that the holy Quran was altered following the Prophet Mohammed’s death.

In his series, Lectures on Quran Interpretation, which is published during Ramadan on his official YouTube channel, Mr Al Sadr said “Quran was altered about 500 years ago, and it remains distorted to this day. But in the future, it will be corrected and the true Quran will be revealed with its complete, accurate, and unaltered verses, without any omissions and additions. Thus, the Quran’s preservation is intended to occur ultimately, not its preservation in the present time,” he said.

His interpretation has created a wave of discontent and controversy on social media. In one video, a man alleges that Mr Al Sadr’s followers burnt copies of the Quran and dumped them by the Tigris river, standing by stacks of damaged Quran copies.

Pro-Mr Al Sadr commenters denied these copies were burnt by them, saying they belonged to a bookstore in Baghdad that was damaged by a fire.

Born in the religious city of Najaf, Mr Al Sadr came to prominence as a young cleric after the 2003 US-led invasion by raising an insurgent army, leveraging his influence as the son of a revered Grand Ayatollah killed for opposing the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Embracing an Iraqi nationalist identity against foreign influence marked him out in a field of post-invasion leaders at one time or another seemingly beholden to different foreign states. For years, his Mahdi Army militia fought the US troops and was later accused of killing Sunnis during the country’s civil war, between 2006-2009.

Mr Al Sadr has not yet declared himself an ayatollah and instead uses the title hujjatu al-islam wal-muslimin (proof/authority of Islam and for Muslims), the clerical rank immediately below that of ayatollah.

In October 2021, Iraq held early elections in response to one of the core demands of a nationwide, pro-reform protest movement that began in 2019 in central and southern parts of the country in which Mr Al Sadr emerged as the biggest winner. But bitter rivalry among political elites, mainly among the country’s majority Shiites, delayed the process of forming a government until October 2022.

Mr Al Sadr's efforts to form a government failed despite his movement putting in a strong showing, winning 73 seats in the 329-seat Parliament. His desire to form a majority government only with Sunni and Kurdish parties upset his rivals in the Co-ordination Framework, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias and parties that suffered major losses in the election.

In June 2022, he ordered his MPs to resign from Parliament and to withdraw from the country's political process until it was purged of what he described as “the corrupt”.