The results of Iraq’s 2025 national elections have crystallised several long-term trends. The withering of ideological politics has accelerated, while employment patronage has consolidated as the main vehicle for political mobilisation. However, for those excluded from the benefits of this state largesse, trust in political leadership continues to wane. Turnout was notably lowest amongst Iraq’s Shia majority in Baghdad and the southern provinces, while over 700,000 ballots were spoiled. This constituency is finding new avenues for activism, with religious actors adopting a new and influential role in Iraq’s protest politics.
The new clerical activism
This summer brought a surprising development in Iraq’s oil capital, Basra: a cohort of young clerics emerged to lead demonstrations over jobs and services. Most prominent has been Sheikh Haitham al-Mansouri, who headed large protests in Imam al-Sadiq in northern Basra. Others include Sheikh Hussein al-Mizairawi in Qurna, Sheikh Abd al-Ghaffar al-Awadhi in Madaina, and Sheikh Muthanna al-Rubaie in Dayr-Nashwa. Notably, these figures are not Sadrists but clerics linked to the hawza – the Shia religious establishment in Najaf. Their activism raises questions about the possible politicisation of the hawza and the role of religion in protest mobilisation.
In Basra’s peripheries, clerics retain significant legitimacy through their association with the hawza. They also provide a protective shield for local organizing, as the state and armed groups are less likely to deploy typical counter-protest tactics – such as violence and legal harassment – against religious figures.
These norms are now being tested. Basra’s Governor Assad al-Idani recently took the unusual step of launching a legal case against Sheikh Abd al-Ghaffar al-Awadhi, accusing the cleric of inciting protests over water shortages in Madaina. In response, Awadhi threatened to escalate the protest and march on the courts. Idani eventually withdrew the case following tribal mediation. The episode exposed the growing tension between Basra’s political establishment and increasingly influential forms of clerical activism.
The more prominent role of the clerics in protests follows the weakening of alternative protest frameworks through lost legitimacy, violence and co-optation. In the absence of other voices, Basra’s activist clerics now articulate their own critique of the political system. Mansouri, for example, recently told followers: ‘State institutions are absent, replaced by chaos and the dominance of party mafias…We have seen that those in charge will not build even a school for you except after continuous pressure and protests’.
Changing protest leadership in Basra
In part, shifts in Basra’s protest leadership reflect a divergence between urban and rural areas. While the urban middle classes have invested heavily in Governor Idani’s Tasmeem party, more rural districts are searching for alternative leadership to drive political attention to underdevelopment.
Largely secular civil activist elites, leftist political parties, social media influencers and university students were all prominent to varying degrees in organizing protests in Basra from the 2010 ‘Electricity intifada’ through to the 2019 Tishreen movement. However, each of these groupings has seen its credibility and influence decline.
Most notably, the student leadership of Tishreen has either been absorbed into the public sector or diverted into sectoral protests demanding jobs from the state. The strong electoral performance in Basra of Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s Uday Awad is largely attributable to his patronizing these groups of unemployed graduate protesters. Meanwhile, the perceived failures of Tishreen-linked political structures – such as Imtidad – have diminished Iraqis’ willingness to engage in activism through such channels.
Indeed, campaigning for Iraq’s November election illustrated the fading ideological power of secularism, madaniya and the ‘civil state’. These concepts – so central to Iraq’s protest movements from 2015 through Tishreen – now join other symbolic and ideological categories that are exhausted politically, such as sect and Islamism. The weak electoral performance of Tishreen-linked political entities – such as al-Badeel – further reinforced how political organisation is now limited to the raw patronage power of the state.
Politicisation of the hawza?
The hawza has periodically supported protest movements in Iraq at strategic moments. It actively backed anti-colonial uprisings such as the 1920 Revolution and opposed authoritarian regimes during events like the 1977 and 1979 intifadas (guided by Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr). In the post-2003 era, however, the hawza’s stance has been more cautious. Senior clerics like Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have offered moral guidance rather than directly orchestrating mobilization, including during Tishreen.
Nevertheless, Iraq’s modern history shows that clerical networks can be catalytic, linking local activism to broader political movements – as seen in the eruption of Sadrist militancy post-2003. To date, Basra’s activist clerics have avoided formal coordination, limiting themselves to public statements of mutual solidarity. They have also sought to keep protests non-partisan, bargaining with local authorities as community representatives and not political agents. Local sources suggest that the clerics are acting independently of the hawza, with the latter maintaining strict limits on clerical involvement in politics. Yet, they are clearly drawing on the symbolic power of the Shia religious establishment – and even Najaf’s silence is likely to be interpreted as tacit support.
It would nonetheless require a significant shift in circumstances for clerics in Shia Iraq to move from local activism to organising a broader and more political movement. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu theorized such moments as a ‘synchronization’ of social crises, where local disruptions in the social order converge and transform into wider, historical developments.
Such a synchronization could be on the near horizon. The passing of Ayatollah Sistani will trigger a crisis of Shia religious authority, transforming the relationship between the hawza, the state and politics in Iraq. If this coincides with other crises in the politics and administration of the Iraqi state, it is likely to politicize the social dynamics of the hawza and set the scene for new forms of clerical activism. In this scenario, the emergence of Basra’s activist clerics may be the precursors of a new phase in religious leadership in the political sphere – and of Iraq’s next protest movement.
