Oxford University Press, 1992); Jane I. Smith, Islam in
America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000),
160–167.
Daawa Party of Iraq (Religious Call Party
[Arabic: Hizb al-Daawa al-Islamiyya]; also
Dawa, Islamic Dawa Party)
The Daawa Party is one of the two leading Shii
political parties in iraq. It was founded in the
holy city of Najaf by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr
(d. 1980) and other members of the Shii clergy
in 1957. Its original purpose was to oppose com-
munist and Arab nationalist movements that
were gaining strength in Iraq and to reverse the
declining influence of the Shii Ulama. It drew its
first recruits from the religious colleges of Najaf
and karbala, but traditional-minded ulama did
not approve of the party’s innovations. To avoid
detection, the Daawa formed secret cells of party
members, resembling those of Iraqi communists
and Baathists. From 1964 to 1968, after the fall
of the leftist government of Abd al-Karim Qasim
(d. 1963), Daawa was able to operate more openly
and recruited new members from college students
and intellectuals in other Iraqi cities. Many new
recruits also came from the Thawra district on the
northeastern edge of baghdad, a low-income quar-
ter (now known as Sadr City) of Shii immigrants
from the countryside. Outside Iraq, it established
branches in lebanon, syria, iran, aFghanistan,
and Britain. Strengthening its grip on the coun-
try in the late 1960s, Iraq’s Baath government
launched a repressive campaign against the Shia,
forcing Shii groups to go underground.
Daawa leaders were executed by the govern-
ment during the 1970s, but the party was still
able to organize antigovernment demonstrations
on major Shii religious holidays. Party activ-
ism intensified in the aftermath of the iranian
revolUtion oF 1978–79, which was inspired by
Ayatollah rUhollah khomeini (d. 1989), a senior
Iranian cleric who had lived and taught in Najaf
from 1964 to 1978. The goals and tactics of
Daawa became more radical. It called for estab-
lishing an Islamic government in Iraq, created a
terrorist operations unit, and conducted armed
attacks against the Baathists and their allies in
other Persian gUlF states during the Iran-Iraq
war of 1980–88. It attempted to assassinate Iraq’s
president, saddam hUsayn, and other government
officials, and it was allegedly involved in the
bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait in 1983.
The Iraqi government officially outlawed Daawa
in 1980 and declared that party members would
be subject to execution. Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr
and other Shii leaders were arrested and put to
death. Many members fled to Iran, where they
set up a headquarters in exile, supported by that
country’s revolutionary government. Although the
party has preached peaceful coexistence between
Sunnis and the Shia, together with Iraqi national
unity, the leadership and ideology of the party has
largely been shaped by Shii doctrines and sym-
bols. For example, party tracts at the time stated
that the highest levels of leadership should be
held by mujtahids, a designation for Shii religious
authorities. Nevertheless, during their exile in
Iran, effective leadership of the party shifted to
lay members, such as Ibrahim Jaafari (b. 1947), a
physician who had joined the party in the 1960s.
The party remained a staunch opponent of
the government of Saddam Husayn but shifted to
improve its relations with Western countries after
the Gulf War of 1990–91, when an international
coalition army drove Husayn’s Iraqi forces out
of Kuwait. After Husayn’s government was over-
thrown by the United States in 2003, the Daawa
Party reestablished itself in Iraq, and party mem-
bers joined the new provisional government. In
January 2005, it became a leading member of the
United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of political par-
ties elected to govern the occupied country until
a constitutional government could be formed.
Daawa members won control of important gov-
ernment ministries, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the
head of Daawa, became the country’s new prime
minister. He was succeed by another party loyal-Daawa Party of Iraq 179 J