Imagining Najaf After Sistani: Continuity or Change for the Shia of Iraq?

(Grand Ayatollah Sistani leading Janazah prayer over Grand Ayatollah Khoei/Photo: Ijtihad Network)

The conclusion of the papal conclave in Rome has raised questions about the process of succession in the Najaf seminary in Iraq. It has escaped no one’s attention that Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, long considered a guardian of Iraq’s democratic process and stability, will turn 95 in August. Given his pivotal role in stabilizing Iraq during the two decades of political turmoil that followed the 2003 war, observers are concerned about how his death might impact the country’s stability. Notably, those most concerned with an opaque succession process tend to be either non-Iraqis or non-adherents. They are particularly concerned about Iran’s ability to impact the succession process and thereby expand its influence in Iraq. Those closest to the seminary understand the persistence of Najaf and its distinct identity and harbor no such fears. In fact, this may be the smoothest succession process, as it is occurring at a time in which the Shia seminary has a positive relationship with the Iraqi state and does not face persecution from it.

The concern about a political vacuum or security crisis following Sistani’s death stems from a commonly held belief that Sistani has played a positive role in moving Iraq away from political crises, an argument that other writers have detailed at length and which is not the primary focus of this piece. Rather, in this essay, I ask and answer the following questions: How does the process of succession in the Najaf seminary look like? What will Najaf (and Iraq) look like after Sistani? What role do external actors, including Iran, play in succession (if any)? I conclude by reasserting that one can expect continuity and stability from Najaf.

Religious Authority

The position that Sistani holds in Najaf, that of the Highest Religious Authority, is a powerful but unofficial one. It has transformed historically to accommodate the developments in the modern Iraqi state and the position of Najaf as the most important seminary in it. As such, Sistani is both the head of the religious seminary (Hawza) in Najaf and the undisputed leader of the Shia religious establishment in Iraq. Beyond being the Highest Religious Authority in Iraq, he is considered by many to be the Highest Religious Authority globally.

Clerical authority is rooted in the concept of taqlid, a Shia belief that each lay adherent must select a suitably knowledgeable cleric to guide them in their religious affairs. The clerics that are deemed worthy of being religious authorities must satisfy a set of conditions: they must be living, of legitimate birth, just, pious, mentally sound, and knowledgeable and capable of ijtihad (the independent inference of religious rulings). Some scholars believe that being male is an additional condition, though there are women’s seminaries in Iraq and a few cases of female scholars in Iran. To signal their receptiveness to emulation, Shia clerics publish a book of practice. There are many clerics who have the scholarly credentials to accept followers, but they are not all receptive to having them. The norm is to wait for a green light from senior clerics or wait to inherit a cleric’s existing adherent base.

When adherents choose to follow a cleric they also direct their religious taxes towards them, which then allows the cleric to support their students financially and to establish charitable organizations. This financial support from followers is also important for the seminary’s survival, as it allows it to maintain independence from the state.

Among the handful of religious authorities that are suitable candidates for emulation, the most knowledgeable and most followed are selected by their peers to be the leaders of the religious establishment. The role of adherent emulation lends a modestly democratic air to the process, as it suggests that a universally unpopular cleric cannot rise to this position.

In the past, there were instances in which the seminary did not have one clear Highest Religious Authority but several competing clerics. Since the dawn of the modern nation-state, this has increasingly become one figure believed to be responsible for the seminaries and adherents across the country, thus reflecting implicit clerical acceptance of the modern nation-state. Despite this recognition of the Iraqi state, the position of Highest Religious Authority has often been held by clerics of Iranian origin, though nationality or ethnicity is not a determining variable. Grand Ayatollah Muhsin Al-Hakim, who passed away in 1970, was the first Arab Highest Religious Authority in the modern period.

Demographic engineering under the Ba’ath regime in the 1980s and 1990s targeted non-Arabs (or those believed to not be Arab enough), intensifying during the Iran-Iraq war. The seminary was particularly targeted, given its alarming independence from the state (made possible by its independent stream of income) and its tendency towards ethnic and national heterogeneity. The Ba’ath party dreamed of grooming an Arab successor to Grand Ayatollah Abulqasim Al-Khoei, but failed in its attempts to infiltrate the seminary. Instead, they imprisoned, deported, and executed clerics while limiting visas for international students who wanted to study in Najaf. As a result, there is an entire generation of advanced seminary students and teachers who are predominantly Arab, a reversal from prior Iranian-majority periods. This will no doubt impact future successions, especially as there are several prominent clerics from Arab scholarly families like the Hakim family, the Jawahiri family, and the Al-Radhi family.

The process of succession in Najaf: Distinguishing between the Highest Religious Authority and Sistani’s Intellectual Inheritor

Practically, the question of who succeeds Sistani is about who will inherit Sistani’s followers as that constitutes the largest group of adherents in Iraq (possibly in the world). Sistani himself inherited followers from Khoei, though he further grew his follower base. Khoei’s office grew during an oil boom in the Middle East, in which his adherents’ contributions allowed Khoei’s seminaries and charitable institutions to expand globally. After Khoei passed away, his institution did not immediately settle on Sistani, but had announced that they were following Grand Ayatollah Mohammed-Ridha Golpaygani who was in Qom, Iran. At the same time, Najafi clerics settled on Grand Ayatollah Abd Al-Ala Sabzawari, Khoei’s peer and intellectual rival, as the most learned cleric and the Highest Religious Authority. Sabzawari’s tenure was short as he passed away almost exactly a year after Khoei.

The position of Khoei’s successor was a question of who will inherit Khoei’s personal office and followers (which the Al-Khoei Foundation play a large role in directing) and who will succeed Khoei as the Highest Religious Authority (which elite clerics determined through selecting the most learned among them). In that example, three figures occupied these various positions in the span of three years, something we can expect for the successorship of Sistani as well.

Given these dynamics, a cleric of Sistani’s standing is likely to signal preferences for intellectual inheritors, which might be interpreted as his views about the next most learned cleric or the next eligible Highest Religious Authority. However, the process of succession of Highest Religious Authority must recognize seniority in the seminary. For many years in Najaf, it was believed that Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Saeed Al-Hakim, who passed away in 2021, would have assumed this brief period of peer successorship, before a younger cleric would then succeed him. Now, it is believed that this might be one of his peer Grand Ayatollahs in Najaf – Bashir Al-Najafi or Ishaq Al-Fayadh, before they too would be followed by a younger cleric.

The Highest Religious Authority has to be someone which the seminary regards as the most knowledgeable, a decision made through deliberation among prominent jurists. This person is not necessarily a successor to Sistani’s office or followers, but having that distinction would make them a strong contender. This figure will likely be one of Sistani’s students, distinguished by their scholarship and relatively unknown to those outside the seminary (although several names have been circulated in recent months). Many people point out that Sistani’s sons are qualified candidates, but there is an informal norm against father-son successorships in the Shia religious establishment. If one of Sistani’s sons were to claim that the intermediary peer successor nullified the father-son successorship norm, it would be technically true, but it would still raise red flags within the seminary (though it might be welcome by Sistani’s lay followers).

The period between these successions – months or a few years – will allow Sistani’s office to select and signal an intellectual inheritor. The office will continue to function and to operate, led by Sistani’s sons, even after his death. The internet and the revolution in communications technology has allowed clerics’ legacies to live on after their deaths. For example, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah’s office still issues announcements for the beginning and end of the fast in Ramadan. Grand Ayatollah Khoei’s name is still associated with institutions globally. There is no reason that Sistani’s office will simply dissolve or disappear after his death. In fact, Sistani’s office might continue to play a role as an interlocutor between the Iraqi government and the Najaf seminary.

Impact on Politics 

Prior revolutions in communications and transportation – like the railroad and the telegraph – changed the religious establishment by allowing a single cleric to reach a broader audience. The plurality of elite clerics historically can be partially explained by their inability to extend far geographically. The national and global centralization of one Highest Religious Authority from Najaf is a new development with political implications.

Among the various actors that are interested in influencing succession in Najaf, Iran stands out as the most alarming to external observers. Understandably so, Iran wields a lot of political, economic, and security influence in Iraq. Moreover, it has formally espoused clerical political rule, taking the concept of taqlid beyond the realm of the personal and familial to the social and political. Khomeini’s concept of the Jurist-Ruler is an extreme and politicized form of religious authority, and an unpopular one in Najaf. Najaf’s resurgence as a center of Shia scholarship has also threatened Iran’s position as the leader of the Shia world, especially given how shaky Khamenei’s scholarly credentials are in comparison to someone like Sistani. There is no doubt that Iran is extremely interested in influencing the successorship, but there are no easy ways for them to do so.

First, while the Highest Religious Authority has occasionally been a cleric in the Qom seminary, this would be incompatible with the Jurist-Ruler and would represent a threat to Khamenei’s position. This has also meant that the Highest Religious Authority in the Shia world is more likely to remain in Najaf. Even if one were to be proclaimed in Iran, it would be likely for the clerics of Najaf to select a peer in their own city to maintain their own valued independence from Iran.

This leaves Iran with the option of attempting to influence either the Highest Religious Authority in Najaf or Sistani’s intellectual inheritor (or, both, if they happen to overlap). As previously mentioned, Sistani’s successor will be a product of the Najaf seminary and not someone who is parachuted in by outside powers. It will be someone who shares the same values as the average cleric in Najaf: that the political role of the Highest Religious Authority is as a caretaker of the public good and order, an individual who will constrain their political involvement and only intervene in moments of crisis. The Najaf seminary has persisted for centuries by molding adaptive clerics. Outsiders who hold wildly different views tend to not prosper in Najaf (Khomeini himself did not prosper in Najaf) or they tend to be remolded into submission by the system. On one hand, this stifles intellectual innovation, but it is a self-preservationist mechanism forged under the fires of centuries of state-led marginalization.

Another mechanism is to perhaps cut off the Supreme Authority’s funding channels from their followers in Iran, but clerics tend to use money to fund local charities and students, rather than move it to a central location and disperse it. More importantly, the funds from Iranian followers are likely to be minuscule – particularly after years of sanctions – in comparison to wealthy contributors from around the globe.

Iran is also likely concerned about its own succession, given that Khamenei is 86. While the Najaf seminary has existed for centuries, the seminary in Qom has only been around since 1920 and the position of the Supreme Leader has only undergone one succession cycle.

In a country of poor-quality institutions, the Najaf seminary stands out as an outlier, managing successions under much more difficult circumstances and under much more adversarial regimes. Given the size of the seminary, its wealth, and the abundance of suitable clerics, this may be the smoothest succession process in Najaf’s history.