ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to analyze how religious opposition parties from Iraq’s majority Shi’i population interacted with this concept in the period between George W. Bush’s State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 until the collapse of the Ba’th regime in Baghdad on April 9, 2003. It focuses on parties and persons who work with the aim of ultimately establishing an Islamic state. Any analysis of attitudes to federalism among Shi’is working on an Islamic platform will have to take into account some overarching questions about the relationship between believers, clergy and state power that arise from certain main premises of Shi’i theology. Given the historically marginal position of federalism within Shi’i political debate, it is not surprising that some Shi’i Islamists held strong reservations against the concept as it resurfaced in oppositional circles in 2002, initially in the form of familiar schemes based upon two or three federal units.
