Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim

Shiite cleric who headed the largest opposition group in Iraq and advocated a form of pluralism in his society
The Shiite cleric and political leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, who has been assassinated, aged 63, in his hometown of Najaf, devoted most of his adult years to opposing the regime of Saddam Hussein. He had just finished a sermon on the need for Iraqi unity and was emerging from the gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali when he and at least 75 others were hit by a massive car-bomb explosion.

Al-Hakim headed the Supreme Council of the Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), probably the largest opposition group in the country. As a scion of one of the most prominent and respected Iraqi Shiite families, he wielded enormous influence over the Shiites, who constitute more than 60% of the Iraqi population.

The ayatollah only returned to his native country on May 12 this year, after spending more than two decades of exile in Iran. The parallels with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini are striking. The Iraqi was often seen as someone of equivalent status for his fellow citizens to Khomeini in Iran and just as that cleric spent 12 years in exile - in Najaf - before returning, via Paris, to vast crowds in Tehran, in early 1979 so al-Hakim received comparable adulation when he returned.

With hindsight, it should have been obvious that al-Hakim's life was in danger. For milling amongst May's throng in Najaf were supporters of the 29-year-old Ayatollah Moqtada al-Sadr. The younger sheikh is the son of the late Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, murdered in 1999. He is said to represent radicalised urban Shiites who dwell in Sadr City - formerly Saddam City - in Baghdad.

Al-Sadr's acolytes repudiate the right of "exiles", like Hakim, to assume natural leadership of the Iraqi Shiites. Some say they represent a generational challenge to the older Shiite opposition. Rumours have associated al-Sadr's men with a recent unsuccessful assassination attempt on al-Hakim's uncle, Grand Ayatollah Seyed Mohammed Said al-Hakim.

Schisms have mounted alarmingly within the Shiite community. Only a day after Saddam's overthrow, another prominent Shiite cleric who returned from exile, Ayatollah al-Khoei (obituary, April 12 2003) was hacked to death by rivals in the Najaf mosque. A taboo had been broken, as the right of sanctuary in a holy place is pivotal to Shiite beliefs.

Al-Hakim spoke out against American rule of Iraq. "They gave the justification that they came in the name of liberation, but now they are an occupying force", he said in June, adding ominously: "If the people lose their patience, there will be social uproar." Yet the politician was subtle and pragmatic. He admonished supporters not to use force against the foreign armies, and allowed, and even encouraged his brother, Abdel-Aziz, to sit on the provisional governing council. This was all the more remarkable, given that Abdel-Aziz also heads SCIRI's Iranian-based Badr Brigades, which United States defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned not to intervene during this year's US and British invasion. By contrast, supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr have shunned the council.

Al-Hakim cut an inspiring figure. Though his head was swathed in the familiar auspicious black turban of a sayyid - descendant of the house of Mohammed - his face often betrayed a mischievous smile. Such a demeanour gave little hint of his past suffering.

Al-Hakim was born in Najaf, where his father was a senior cleric. He received a traditional Shiite imam's training, but was arrested and tortured for his beliefs by Saddam's forces in 1972. Five of his brothers and another dozen or so relatives were killed by the Baathist regime.

In 1980 he fled to Iran, a predominantly Shiite country, just as it began fighting his homeland in a brutal eight-year-long war. Until then al-Hakim had belonged to the shadowy Dawa (the call) group, Shiites who periodically launched armed attacks on state functionaries, yet who were mainly dominated by conservative clerics.

In Tehran al-Hakim created SCIRI as an umbrella group, encompassing Dawa and other bodies. He was angry with US "betrayal" in 1991, when the first president Bush appeared to promise to assist a Shiite rebellion, and then let them down in March, leaving them at the mercy of Saddam's Republican Guard. Tens of thousands were believed slaughtered in Iraq's south.

By the late 1990s, Dawa seemed to have distanced itself from SCIRI, accusing the latter of falling too far under the sway of Iran, and especially leading the hardline Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet after 2001, al-Hakim made strenuous efforts to advocate inter-denominational pluralism, and democracy - doubtless realising the innate numerical preponderance of Shiites in Iraq. He also suggested he no longer had plans for an Iraq based on vilayet e-fagih - the Iranian fundamentalist formulation of "rule by clerics".

Signs of SCIRI's potency were clear when Iraqi dissidents met last December in London, and set up a British and American-backed 65-member Follow-up and Arrangement Committee (FUAC). SCIRI members gained eight seats; and affiliated independent allies another eight, thus making them, nominally, the most powerful opposition force in Iraq.

· Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, ayatollah, born 1939; died August 29 2003.