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Introduction

Islamic endowments are key components of Iraq’s religious field. They can be divided into two main categories. First, mosques, shrines, and other public religious sites. Second, lands, real estate, and any kind of property declared as such by their original owners. The way they are governed and structured is essential in shaping the experience of lived Islam and in defining the relative positions and roles of religious authorities. Mosques and shrines are key nodes of public gatherings, giving those in charge of them platforms to disseminate their messages and assert themselves in the religious domain. They often have facilities that can be used for commercial purposes or as real estate, and they receive donations and charities from pilgrims and philanthropists. Together with other endowments, they generate revenue that provides the authorities that control them with the means to sustain themselves. Some, especially the shrines of Shia imams and leading Sunni figures, also boost the social status and religious authority of those supervising them.

The terrain of Islamic endowments has seen a major restructuring after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, which resulted in significant changes that had an impact on the roles and relative positions of religious authorities. This led to the growing confessionalization of the religious field and to opposing effects on the Sunni and Shia religious authorities. It led to fragmentation and deepened rivalries among religious actors in the Sunni religious field, while resulting in the consolidation and centralization of Najaf’s religious authority in the Shia religious field.

Islamic Endowments and the Restructuring of the Religious Field

Prior to 2003, the government controlled most of the important Islamic endowments in Iraq through the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs (MERA), which was the main official tool to strictly watch over the religious domain and propagate a unified, state-sanctioned message in mosques.¹ Shia shrines and Sunni mosques were run by administrators appointed by MERA, often selected based on their demonstrated loyalty to the regime. Imams and preachers were mostly state employees or licensed by MERA and the local Baath Party branch, and the party and other security organs monitored their sermons.² Clerics and imams who did not follow the instructions of the government or whose sermons contained messages inconsistent with the official version were labeled as “noncooperative” or “disloyal” elements.³ They were often sacked or arrested—or even executed.⁴

Shia parties and religious authorities considered the Baathi state anti-Shia by virtue of its oppression of the Shia population and clergy (especially after the 1991 uprising), the execution and assassination of prominent Shia clerics, and the restrictions imposed on the performance of Shia rituals. Although the Baath Party was secular, the regime came to be dominated by Sunni Arabs who were suspicious of the autonomy of the Shia clergy and clashed with Shia Islamists who opposed the regime.⁵ Following the fall of the regime, Shia parties and religious authorities sought to alter what they perceived as an oppressive policy designed to obscure Shia identity, of which MERA was seen as one key tool. Yet, even Sunni Islamist parties, primarily the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), were critical of the former regime’s secular tendencies and saw its fall as an opportunity to reassert the position of religion in the public life.⁶

Therefore, the post-2003 official policy adopted a new model that recognized the autonomy of religious institutions and their right to operate independently in the public sphere. The first step in implementing this model was the decision made in August 2003 by the Provisional Governing Council (formed by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to include members of Iraqi political factions in decisionmaking) to abolish MERA.⁷ The decision, which was promoted by Shia Islamist parties, in coordination with the IIP, replaced the ministry with confessional offices of endowments: the Office of Shia Endowment (OSHE), the Office of Sunni Endowment (OSE), and the Office of Christian, Ezidian and Sabean Mandaean Endowments. This was meant to end the state’s control over the religious field and allow Iraq’s multiple sects and religions more freedom to express their identities and beliefs within a new political framework that asserted plurality and the representation of ethnoreligious communities. Yet, this shift in the field of Islamic endowments generated new struggles over the identity of Islamic sites and the jurisdiction of the new confessional endowments. It accelerated the confessionalization of the religious domain and the rivalry among religious actors—between the two confessions and within each one—for status, revenue, and economic profits.

In the context of the turmoil and lawlessness that followed the U.S. invasion, several religious groups competed to control Islamic endowments,⁸ which further justified the effort to restructure them institutionally. Yet, assigning mosques, religious sites, and other endowments to the OSHE or the OSE was not an easy task, given that it required setting acceptable criteria to decide what belonged to either office. Many Shia Islamists and clerics were convinced that the former regime had built Sunni mosques and forced philanthropists and donors to register their endowments as Sunni ones, as part of its strategy to obscure the Shia identity.⁹ On its website, the OSHE argued that the regime had created many obstacles to prevent donors from endowing resources for Shia mosques or Hussaniyyas,¹⁰ and it said that the office had found documents proving the existence of a deliberate policy to neglect and minimize Shia endowments and religious sites.¹¹ OSE officials did not agree with this characterization. They argued that MERA had already made a useful distinction between Sunni and Shia endowments in its institutional structure, and that it was possible to rely on this in developing the new structure.¹²

An advisory committee including Shia and Sunni clerics and experts was formed in 2004 to distribute Islamic endowments. According to an OSE official, it made progress in the allocation of personnel, endowments, and most religious sites to the two offices. Still, problems remained with regard to the endowments that the representatives of the two sides claimed to be part of their jurisdiction or disagreed on determining their confessional identity.¹³ A Committee of Separation and Isolation (lijnata al-Fak wal-’Azl) was then formed in 2008, with among its members a judge, an official of the Property Claims Commission, a representative of the Directorate of Land Registry, and representatives of the OSE and the OSHE. Initially, the committee agreed on four main criteria to determine the identity of endowments and religious sites: the endowment registry title, the confessional identity of the donor, the donor’s documented will with regard to which confessional group the revenue or services targeted, and any other evidence that could help determining the confessional identity of the donor. However, this was not enough to solve all disputes between the OSHE and the OSE as they did not agree on a unified method to apply these criteria with regard to hundreds of mosques, buildings, and land plots. Therefore, they decided to resort to the courts in order to determine the identity of disputed endowments. But even this was not enough to solve the disputes, especially given that in many cases there was a lack of documentation as well as unwillingness, by the OSHE and Shia groups in particular, to recognize some of the documents that they argued had been forged by the former regime. As a result, the meetings of the committee rarely ended with a clear agreement on the points of contention.¹⁴

Confessionalization of Islamic Endowments

The restructuring of the Islamic endowments domain accelerated the process of confessionalization of the religious field in Iraq, which was reinforced by the deepening sectarian divide, violence, and rise of ethnosectarian politics after 2003. As a result, the boundary between the two Islamic confessions has been further solidified and neutral spaces became points of contention rather than of cohabitation. The “Shiazation” or “Sunnization” of religious sites reflected the new dynamic that reshaped the Islamic endowments domain and the urban space in which these sites functioned as markers of collective culture and identity.

One significant example of the process of confessionalization is the shrine of the tenth and eleventh Shia imams in Samarra, a predominantly Sunni city. The shrine was historically administered by a Sunni family with a Sufi background. In December 2005, the parliament passed a law for the management of Shia shrines, commonly known as ‘atabat, that assigned the responsibility for their administration to the OSHE. Several Sunni religious authorities and Samarra residents objected to this arrangement. The first OSE president, Sheikh Abdul Ghafur as-Samara’i, a native of the city, publicly criticized it, arguing that Samarra was a Sunni city and its inhabitants had always held the shrine in respect and protected it.¹⁵ In 2012, the federal court rejected a lawsuit presented by the OSE regarding the legal basis upon which the jurisdiction of the OSHE was extended to the shrine.¹⁶ Attacks on the shrine by Sunni jihadists in 2006 only reinforced the Shia belief that it was located in an unfriendly environment and needed special care and protection. This is why Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Saraya as-Salam militia to be deployed to Samarra to protect the shrine when the self-proclaimed Islamic State began to march toward the city in 2014. Recently, some residents and Sunni officials have accused the OSHE and Shia militias of orchestrating a campaign to illegally control commercial and residential buildings surrounding the shrine as part of a policy to cause demographic change in the area.¹⁷

Likewise, some of Baghdad’s historical mosques have been contested as the OSE and the OSHE claimed the right to manage them. These disputes have been driven by attempts on each side to assert its narrative about the history and identity of each mosque and its surrounding area. One example is al-Assiffiyya mosque in the center of the city. Built in 1017 and renovated in the nineteenth century, the OSHE claims it contains the grave of the prominent Shia theologian Muhammed bin Ya’qub al-Kullaini (846–941), while Sunni authorities claim the mosque, which for a long time was associated with the Sufi order of al-Mawlawiyya, contains the grave of the Sufi scholar al-Harith al-Muhassibi. Both the OSHE and OSE claimed the right to supervise the mosque until this dispute was resolved in favor of the former a few years ago.

Other disagreements took place with regard to the historical al-Khillani mosque in the center of Baghdad, which the OSHE appropriated based on the common Shia belief that it contains the grave of Muhammed bin Osman al-Omairi, one of the four deputies of the twelfth Shia imam, a claim that the OSE and other Sunni clerics dispute.¹⁸ Both mosques came under the supervision of the OSHE despite the continuous objections of OSE officials, which reflects a pattern in post-2003 sectarianization and assertion of Shia hegemony in Baghdad. This hegemony became possible partly because of the dominance of Shia groups in state institutions and partly because of the success of Shia militias in quelling their Sunni counterparts.

A similar dispute emerged with regard to several Islamic endowments in Mosul and was exacerbated after the liberation of the city from the Islamic State. The OSHE demanded that twenty mosques in the city, some carrying the names of Shia historical figures, be placed under its jurisdiction, but the then governor of Mosul, Atheel al-Nujaifi, refused this request and emphasized their Sunni identity.¹⁹ When the Shia militias gained more influence after the liberation of the city, they sought to take over these mosques or to assert the OSHE’s authority over them. The OSE and Sunni politicians complained, deeming this an attempt to change Mosul’s identity.²⁰

Another dimension for these disputes was the location of Islamic endowments. Most historical mosques are found in commercial areas and are part of endowments that have stores, residences, or garages attached to them.²¹ These extras often provide revenue to the institution or groups managing them, especially in the form of rent paid by tenants or investors who occupy them. Hence, these disputes were not purely religious but also largely linked to economic motives.²² This dimension is particularly clear in the disputes over the so-called presidential mosques, about fourteen mosques with large facilities whose construction was ordered by Saddam Hussein. Some OSHE officials disputed their classification as Sunni and demanded their distribution equally between the OSHE and the OSE. Another disagreement emerged as to what qualifies a mosque as “presidential.” The OSHE extended this definition to almost all mosques built during the Baathi era, an interpretation rejected by the OSE. In Baghdad, the OSHE eventually accepted the assignment of custodianship of presidential mosques to the OSE (given that most of them had Sunni imams appointed by the government or were located in Sunni areas) with the exception of Ar-Rahman mosque, which is located in the commercial al-Mansour area and is occupied by a Shia group following Sheikh Muhammed al-Ya’qubi, although it is legally assigned to the OSHE.²³ This mosque contains a large garage and land plot that secures good revenue for the institution that controls it. Elsewhere, the presidential mosques were assigned according to the nature of the sectarian majority in each province.

Additionally, the 2006–2007 sectarian fighting that was triggered by the attack on the Samarra shrine led to retaliatory attacks on Sunni mosques by Shia militias, especially in Baghdad. Some of these mosques were taken over by these militias, as was the case with al-Qibaa mosque in the as-Shaab district, al-Muthana mosque in the Cairo neighborhood, and al-Mudalal mosque in al-Atafiyya. According to Sunni sources, Shia militias forced Sunni clerics to abandon these mosques or simply took over when their Sunni imams ceased to show up out of fear. This was not limited to mosques and other places of worship, but extended to commercial sites and agricultural lands that, according to these sources, belonged to the OSE and were taken over by the OSHE, with the help of militias or security forces.²⁴ In its defense, the OSHE argued that most of these Islamic endowments were in Shia areas and that the former regime had assigned to them Sunni clerics as part of its anti-Shia policy.²⁵ This is particularly true with mosques such as ar-Rashad, which is located in Sadr City and was contested in the 1990s between the Sadrists and the Salafists. After 2003, the Sadrists controlled the mosque and renamed it al-Sadrayn mosque.

In sum, the confessionalization of Islamic endowments has been part of a broader dynamic of sectarianization that accelerated after 2003. On the one hand, it reinforced the segregation of religious identities and minimized the shared Islamic memory and public spaces that would otherwise serve as points of reference for cross-sectarian solidarity. On the other hand, this separation gave public recognition to Iraq’s multi-confessional fabric, allowing a space for different religious identities to be freely expressed in the public sphere. Yet, in the context of sectarian polarization and the competition of narratives and memories, this display of “differences” was in many cases a cause for tension, or even violent clashes. While there are indicators that, following the defeat of the Islamic State, sectarianism has become less dominant in shaping sociopolitical polarization, Iraq still faces the difficult challenge of reaching a balance between the need to recognize its multi-confessional fabric and the need to reconstruct a cross-sectarian identity, which means cultivating shared collective memories in the public space.

Islamic Endowments and the Restructuring of the Sunni Religious Field

The disputes and rivalries triggered by the confessionalization of the Islamic endowments’ management were not only inter-confessional but also intra-confessional. This was particularly obvious in the case of Sunni endowments, given the fragmentation of the Sunni religious field and the absence of a dominant religious authority within it. Unlike the Shia field, which has a discernible clerical hierarchy presided by the grand marjaʿ, there is no such hierarchy in Sunnism. This can be partly attributed to the long history of identification with the state among Sunni religious authorities, and the fact that MERA had effectively controlled Sunni religious institutions and that most Sunni clerics were state employees. MERA played the leading role in the management of Sunni endowments and religious schools and institutions, but it failed to exert the same degree of control over the Shia religious sites, as well as schools and seminaries (known as hawza). The hawza have a long tradition of autonomy from the state, a more informal setting of teaching and knowledge production, and a stronger presence of non-Iraqi, primarily Iranian, senior clerics who have a transnational base of support.

The creation of the OSE generated a new dynamic within the Sunni religious field, leading to rivalries among different groups. Initially, the Provisional Governing Council in place in 2003–2004, in which the IIP was the largest Sunni party, selected Adnan al-Dulaimi, an Islamic scholar who once was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, to be the OSE president (a ministerial-level position). This kicked off a competition between the IIP and other groups such as the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), led by Harith al-Dhari, as each claimed to be the true representative of the Sunni community. However, the opposition of the AMS to the U.S. occupation and the nascent new state institutions ultimately weakened its position and played into the hands of more pragmatic elements. Eventually, other clerical networks and institutions entered the competition, sometimes by promising to decouple the management of Islamic endowments from political interests.

In August 2005, the Transitional Iraqi Government (in place in 2005–2006) appointed Abdul Ghafur al-Samara’i, a moderate cleric with Sufi roots, as the new president of the OSE, while Dulaimi became the head of the Sunni block in the parliament and took stances that were critical of the government, accusing it of collaboration with—or indifference to—Shia militias that targeted Sunni communities.²⁶ Samara’i had to deal with a difficult scene, given the fragmentation of the Sunni religious field and the influence of radical forces in a context of sectarian polarization and rampant violence. To gain political support, he coordinated with the IIP, and was accused by hardline groups, including the AMS and jihadi factions, of being a puppet of the Shia-dominated government. This criticism escalated when in 2007 he forced the AMS to close its office in the large Um al-Qura mosque in al-Karkh in Baghdad and hand it to the OSE.²⁷ In August 2011, Samara’i survived a suicide attack, likely perpetrated by the group that called itself the Islamic State of Iraq. The attack, which happened when Samara’i and several IIP members were attending a collective prayer, caused several casualties, including the death of an IIP member of parliament.

In 2012, the parliament passed a law for the Office of Sunni Endowment.²⁸ The law gave it several responsibilities such as the management of endowments, investing their revenues, and supporting Sunni religious and philanthropic institutions. According to Article 4.2 of the law, the OSE president shall be nominated by the Council of Ministers and his nomination approved by the Iraqi Jurisprudential Congregation (IJC), an institution formed by the Council of Senior Scholars of Iraq and consisting of five Sufi and five Salafi scholars, headquartered in the prominent al-Imam al-A’zam (Abu Hanifa) mosque in Baghdad. The IIP helped create this institution to partly counter the AMS and partly serve as a collective supreme religious authority for Sunni communities. The law, which the IIP played a key role in drafting and was certified simultaneously with a law for the Office of Shia Endowments, aimed to add more structure to the Sunni religious field.

Samara’i was forced out of office in 2013 after facing accusations of corruption, mainly from his Sunni rivals. As Sunni factions failed to agree on a replacement, then prime minister Haider al-Abadi appointed Abdul Latif al-Humeim as acting president of the OSE in 2015. His nomination was supported by the then speaker of parliament and leading member of the IIP, Salim al-Jubouri, despite the objection of Sunni clerical institutions, such as the IJC, that demanded to be consulted in the selection as stipulated by the OSE law.²⁹ Humeim, an Islamic scholar and former associate of the Baathi regime from Anbar, led a small group of moderate Sunni clerics and personalities named the Association of Iraq’s Ulama and Intellectuals. Other Sunni religious groups, such as the AMS and the IJC, saw him as the choice of the Shia-dominated government, rather than of the legitimate Sunni authorities.

Despite criticism, Humeim went to assert his authority, adopting a moderate discourse and several initiatives for reconstruction and social reconciliation in post–Islamic State Sunni areas.³⁰ He continued Samara’i’s approach of targeting radical imams and preachers, trying to exert further control over Friday sermons. He announced a campaign to fight extremism and intolerance, and he advocated the professionalization of the production of legal opinions by limiting it to only well-established and certified Islamic jurists.³¹

Nevertheless, Humeim faced competition for power and legitimacy from other Sunni religious institutions, including the IJC, headed by Sheikh Ahmed Hasan al-Taha, who previously was an AMS member. Al-Taha and Abdul Wahab al-Samara’i, his son and a leading member of IJC, have complained that their institution was ignored in the appointment of the OSE president, which has weakened the officeholder and made him susceptible to pressures from interest and political groups.³² As a result, there seems to be an increasing tension between the OSE and IJC.³³

The Shia-dominated government has used its power to appoint the OSE president as a means to strengthen loyalist or nonhostile elements within the Sunni religious field. It was concerned that a critical or disloyal OSE president would ally with Sunni insurgents. This can be understood as a policy aiming to reshape the Sunni religious field by directing OSE-related patronage to the government’s allies and pushing out disloyal elements.

Likely, the fact that some of IJC members, primarily Sheikh Rafi’ al-Rifa’i, who also carries the title of mufti ad-diyyar al-Iraqiyya (the mufti of Iraqi territories), adopted an antigovernmental stance and even supported the Sunni protests against the government of former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki (2006–2014), played a role in deepening the suspicion of the government and other Shia groups toward the IJC. Yet, this governmental policy posed a problem regarding the legitimacy and representativeness of the OSE president, stressing the belief among many Sunni scholars and clerics that the government was biased and had an interest in weakening their independence. As a result, the opponents of the government’s handling of this matter have often argued they are driven by a genuine commitment to defending and preserving Sunni identity, which they feel is under attack. Abdul Wahab al-Samara’i says: “We want to avoid extremism, without seeing our identity fully absorbed by the other (referring to the Shia sect).”³⁴ The first OSE president, Adnan al-Dulaimi, who died in 2017, went as far as saying that there is a systematic effort to achieve the “Shiazation” of Iraq. He said that the government and Shia parties led this effort by controlling Sunni mosques and turning Baghdad’s Sunni legacy into a Shia one. ³⁵

One of the institutions that adopted a different approach by allying with Shia groups to improve its position within the Sunni religious field was Dar al-Iftaa’, which is led by Mahdi al-Sumaidaʿi, who calls himself the grand mufti. Dar al-Iftaa’ presented itself as a restoration of the Ottoman-era institution of Iraq’s mufti, which lost its prominence after the foundation of the modern state and was abolished by the Baathi government in the 1970s.³⁶ Neither the OSE nor the IJC accept this. Some made the point that Dar al-iftaa’was in fact a one-man institution and that Sumaidaʿi was not qualified for the position of grand mufti. The IJC contested him at the Majlis Shura ad-Dawla (an administrative judiciary to resolve disputes between state institutions), resulting in the annulment of his attempt to legalize the institution.³⁷ This has not prevented Sumaidaʿi from continuing to present himself as the mufti.

Sumaidaʿi is a Salafi sheikh who grew critical of jihadi groups, replacing his previous anti-Shia stance with a quietist and pro-government Salafism that won him the support of Nuri al-Maliki’s government and Iranian-backed Shia groups.³⁸ He and his followers managed to take over the mosque of Um at-Tubuul, one of the grandest mosques in the west of Baghdad, in 2013. Sumaidaʿi initiated a failed attempt to rename the mosque after Ibn Taimiyya, the controversial medieval Hanbali theologian, while acting as its self-appointed imam. The mosque contains 132 apartments that, according to an OSE official,³⁹ Sumaidaʿi seized in order to fund his activities. The OSE contested these steps and resorted to the courts to reclaim authority over the mosque and its residential facilities. Sumaidaʿi reacted by sending a letter to the OSHE requesting to link the mosque to it, which the OSE considered an attempt to challenge its authority and an unjustifiable move to drag Shia religious authorities into the conflict.⁴⁰ Sumaidaʿi went as far as forming a militia under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), named Harakat Ahrar al-Iraq. The likely objective of this move was to use the war against the Islamic State and the affiliation with the PMF to gain more leverage vis-à-vis his Sunni rivals. He frequently met with representatives of Iranian-backed PMF factions and appeared publicly with General Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force.⁴²

The spread of Salafism had an impact not only on Sunni-Shia relations, but on relations within Sunni communities too. This is primarily because of Salafi hostility to Sufism. Iraq includes some of the most ancient and prominent Sufi traditions, such as the Qadiri and Naqshabandi orders. In the 1990s, Saddam Hussein’s regime increased its support for Sufi orders as a way to counter Saudi influence and the spread of Salafism and as part of its “faith campaign.” This policy continued after 2003, with Sufi groups gaining more freedom and even support from the state and influential political groups. For example, former president Jalal Talabani, in office from 2006 to 2014, who was from a prominent family with a Sufi background, supported the Qadiri order and even appointed the custodian of its main mosque in Baghdad, al-Ghailani mosque.⁴³ Members of a prominent family in the Kasnazani order, which has noticeable Shia leanings, became involved in politics after 2003, gaining seats in the parliament and joining the government.⁴⁴

Yet, Salafism seems to have gained more ground, especially in the context of the sectarian divide and radicalization that characterized the period after 2003. Some Salafi groups controlled several Sunni mosques in areas such as Fallujah and Baghdad’s periphery and used them to propagate anti-U.S. and anti-Shia messages. When the Islamic State controlled major Sunni cities and destroyed Sufi mosques and other Sunni religious sites,⁴⁵ it put in action a version of “Sunnism” that challenged a long tradition, which had already been weakened by decades of state secularization and modernization. Even after the defeat of the Islamic State, some mosques in peripheral areas are either controlled by Salafists or host their informal gatherings. According to Hisham al-Hashimi, a scholar of Salafism in Iraq, the OSE and traditional Sunni institutions control mosques in the urban centers, while Salafists have undisputed presence in the mosques located in Baghdad’s periphery and other urban peripheries.⁴⁶ Most Salafi networks today are quietist, avoiding involvement in politics and focusing their activism on religious matters and ethics. Generally, they offer a more egalitarian Islam than Sufi institutions, attracting the youth who are in search of a plain and less hierarchical religion. Yet, the spread of Salafism reflects the deeper crisis faced by the Sunni religious authorities as they struggle to strike a balance between the radicalizing effect of Salafism and the pressure to moderate the Sunni religious field.

The Sunni religious field will continue to be divided, with the OSE as a key player and a subject for rivalry. The consolidation of its control over religious institutions and endowments will strengthen its authority. Yet, in a domain manipulated by patronage and exclusionary practices, several other actors are concerned that this consolidation will harm their interest