HW 31 Responding to Riverbend

After reading from August 31 to September 16, 2003 in “Baghdad Burning” bye Riverbend many new people and places were mention. But there was one that I thought I would like to learn more about, Al-Hakim. I wanted to learn more about him because they talked about how he had been assassinated and how he was important, but had not given much detail as to how or who assassinated him. He was killed at the age of sixty three in Najaf , where he spend most of his time trying to rebuild the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was after his sermon which was about the need for Iraqi unity and as he was leaving the gold-domed shrine of Iman Ali, he along with about seventy five other people were hit by a massive car-bomb explosion. Many believe that Al-Hakim should have known he was at risk because he represented radicalized urban Shiites who had dwelled in Sadr City (Saddam City) in Baghdad.


Lawrence Joffe, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1032018,00.html