When the Shia spiritual leader Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri announced last week that he would step down as a religious authority, Muqtada al-Sadr realised that he was facing a challenge to his own standing within the Shia community in Iraq.
The 83-year-old al-Haeri, despite his disagreements with al-Sadr, has long been the religious scholar that the Sadrist movement followed in their spiritual and life affairs.
