KARBALA, Iraq -- The bulletin board outside the ramshackle house on a Karbala alley displays edicts by Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric.
Buying a satellite dish is fine, but not if used to capture pornographic broadcasts, one edict, or fatwa, says. Another tells wives of long-missing men they cannot remarry before they are certain that their spouse is dead. Yet another declares delegates to a proposed constitutional conference must be elected, not appointed.
Other fatwas posted outside al-Sistani's Karbala office touch on whether Muslims should eat meat imported from non-Muslim nations, smuggling, arms dealing and allegations that Shiites are taking over mosques used by followers of the mainstream Sunni sect.
Politics and religion, strictly kept apart during decades of Baath party rule, are interwoven in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq where almost unfettered freedoms and widespread distrust of politicians have thrust clerics on to center stage.
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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-iraq-religion-and-politics,0,1120222.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
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