Islamic Dawa Party

Hizb Al-Dawa was formed in 1957[10] by Mohammed Saqik. His aim was to create a party and a movement which would promote Islamic values and ethics, political awareness, combat secularism, and create an Islamic state in Iraq. This came at a time when politics in Iraq was dominated by secularist Arab nationalist and socialist ideas. Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr – who was widely recognized as a leading philosopher, theologian, and political theorist – quickly emerged as the leading member. It had been Sadr who laid the foundations for the party and its ideology, based on Wilayat Al-Umma (Governance of the people). A twin party was also founded in Lebanon by clerics who had studied in Najaf and supported Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr's vision of a resurgent Islam.

Hizb Al-Dawa gained strength in the 1970s recruiting from among the Shi'a ulama and youth. During the 1970s, the government shut down the Shi'a journal Risalat al-Islam and closed several religious educational institutions. The government passed a law obligating Iraqi students of the hawza to undertake national military service. The Ba'athists then began specifically targeting Al-Dawa members, arresting and imprisoning them from 1972 onwards. In 1973, someone killed the alleged head of Al-Dawa's Baghdad branch in prison. In 1974, 75 Al-Dawa members were arrested and sentenced to death by the Ba'athist revolutionary court.[11] In 1975, the government canceled the annual procession from Najaf to Karbala, known as marad al-ras. Although subject to repressive measures throughout the 1970s, large-scale opposition to the government by Al-Dawa goes back to the Safar Intifada of February 1977. Despite the government's ban on the celebration of marad al-ras, Al-Dawa organized the procession in 1977. They were subsequently attacked by police.[12] After this period it also interacted with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the future spiritual leader of Iran, during his exile in Najaf in Iraq. Widely viewed in the West as a terrorist organization at the time, the Dawa party was banned in 1980 and its members sentenced to death in absentia by the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council.[13]

The political ideology of Al-Dawa is heavily influenced by work done by Baqr al-Sadr who laid out four mandatory principles of governance in his 1975 work, Islamic Political System. These were:

1. Absolute sovereignty belongs to Allah.
2. Mullah injunctions are the basis of legislation. The legislative authority may enact any law not repugnant to Islam.
3. The people, as vice-regents for Allah, are entrusted with legislative and executive powers.
4. The jurist holding religious authority represents Allah. By confirming legislative and executive actions, he gives them legality."[22]

Upon joining the party, allegiance must be sworn to the party.[23]

• 1968–1969 – Al-Dawa founded by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in response to repression of Shi'i religious academies in Najaf by the Iraqi Ba'ath regime.[24]
• 1974 – Ba'athist revolutionary court arrests and sentences 75 Al-Dawa members to death.
• 1975 – Annual pilgrimage from Najaf to Karbala – called the Marad al-Ras – is cancelled by the Ba'ath government.
• 1977 February – The Safar Intifada. Al-Dawa organizes Marad al-Ras, in spite of government ban. Event is attacked by police.
• 1979 – Iranian Revolution. Al-Dawa creates a military wing, later called Shahid al-Sadr.
• 1980 30 March – Ba'athist Revolutionary Command Council retroactively bans Al-Dawa; membership was made punishable by death. 96 Al-Dawa members are allegedly executed this month.
• 1980 1 April – Al-Dawa unsuccessfully attempts to assassinate Tariq Aziz, Foreign Minister at the time.
• 1980 9 April – Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister Amina Sadr bint al-Huda are arrested and executed.
• 1981 Mid-December – Iraqi embassy in Beirut is leveled by a suicide bomber. Iraqi Al-Dawa party claims credit for the attack, citing Iraq's invasion of Iran. Perhaps the first Shia suicide bombing, the attack was an "oft-noticed precedent" for the 1983 bombing of the American Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut.[25]
• 1982 – Al-Dawa assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein in Dujail fails. Heavy crack-downs on Al-Dawa by Hussein's regime follow, leading to the Dujail Massacre. Many flee to Iran, where it suffers from competition with SCIRI.
• 1983 12 December – In Kuwait, the American and French embassies, Kuwait airport, the main oil refinery in Kuwait, and a residential area for Raytheon employees are bombed. 17 suspects were soon arrested, mostly Al-Dawa members, including Jamal Jafaar Mohammed (currently member of Iraq's parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition). Jamal Jafaar Mohammed escapes from Kuwait before the trial starts and is sentenced to death in absentia in 1984.
• 1987 – Al-Dawa attacks Saddam's motorcade but again fails to kill him.
• 1996 – Attempt made on the life of Saddam's son, Uday. Al-Dawa blamed.
• 2003 – After the Invasion of Iraq Al-Dawa returns to Iraq, basing itself in the city of Nasiriya which the party now runs and controls.
• 2005 January – The United Iraqi Alliance, triumphs in the January 2005 Elections; Dawa leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari becomes Prime Minister.
• 2005 December – The United Iraqi Alliance, triumphs in the December 2005 Elections.
• 2006 – Dawa deputy leader Nouri al-Maliki replaces Ibrahim al-Jaafari as Prime Minister.

• Dawa
• Da'wa
• Daawa

(Original Arabic is دعوة with pharyngeal consonant—see Dawah.)

• Official website