Muqtada al-Sadr (born 12 August 1973) is an politician of Iraq who is the leader of the Sadrist Movement. Of mixed Iraqi and Lebanese descent, Sadr is a Shia Islam follower who led resistance against the Iraqi Army and US Army during the Iraq War, demanding that the invaders leave the country. He fought until their 2011 withdrawal, and retired from politics in 2014.
Biography[]
Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr was born in the Iraqi city of Najaf on 12 August 1973, of Lebanese and Iraqi descent. Muqtada al-Sadr was descended from the namesake of Sadr City (his grandfather Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, who was killed in 1999 by Saddam Hussein's government), and was given the title Sayyid, meaning that he was descended from Muhammad. Muqtada al-Sadr became an activist for Iraqi democracy after the United States, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Poland, and a coalition of other forces liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein in 2003. The poor Shi'ites of Baghdad supported him in his quest to introduce justice to Iraq, and his organization (the Mahdi Army) built prisons, organized social services, and formed religious courts and law enforcement. However, he had to fight against the Allied forces in Iraq in order to create his new government, which would benefit the people of Iraq. His Mahdi Army was defeated in 2008 at Basra and he failed to conquer Iraq, but after the US troop withdrawal in 2011 (the last foreign troops to leave Iraq), he became a politician of the new republic of Jalal Talabani. Sadr was expected to win the 2014 presidential elections, but he dropped out.