Beardy Watch - Moqtada al-Sadr

Starting a series of occasional posts about today’s prominent Beardy Men, we start today with our young friend Muqta, a man very much in the spotlight at the moment, bravely fighting the coalition forces by killing lots of fellow Iraqis.

Here are Ten Things you ought to know about the “firebrand cleric”

• He’s not a cleric. He never completed his religious education .
  
• He has wide support amongst the Shia poor, loyalty inherited from his father, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was murdered by Saddam.
  
• Other than that no one likes him. Not even the Iranians.
  
• He smells.
  
• He violently opposes the coalition forces in Iraq and the political process they are helping to conduct.
  
• Except for when he wants to be part of that political process.
  
• His favourite saying is: “Do you know who my father was?”
  
• He’s a busy man, running both a newspaper, al-Hawzah, and a militia, the Mahdi Army.
  
• He might have had a hand in killing Abdul Majid al-Khoel, but he says he didn’t.
  
• He has a thing against picnics.

Hell, yeah, let's pull out. Leave him in charge. It'll be alright.