The Thinker President: Anniversary of the Assassination of Martyr Izz al-Din Salim
A writer, thinker, and Shiite political activist – this is how Izz al-Din Salim was known on the Iraqi and international stage during a brief period he spent moving between Iraq, Kuwait, and Iran. During that time, he authored nearly forty books on topics ranging from religion to politics.
His real name was Abdul Zahra Uthman Mohammed, but he was forced to change his name to Izz al-Din Salim as a security precaution to ensure he would not be tracked by the former Baathist regime led by Saddam Hussein, which had tried to assassinate him more than once. He was arrested from 1974 to 1978, after which he managed to escape abroad.
Salim was born in 1943 in the city of Basra, southern Iraq. He began studying religion and politics at an early age, and when he was eighteen he received his first award for his book Fatima al-Zahra.
He quickly joined the Da‘wa Party in 1962 at the age of nineteen, and soon attracted the attention of the Baath Party, which considered him a threat to its power in the south. Salim decided to travel to Kuwait in 1963 and worked there as a teacher.
He later travelled to Iran and joined the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, which opposed the regime in Iraq, and began working as a writer for several Iranian newspapers. While in Iran, he obtained the degree of mujtahid.
In 1982, he founded the Islamic Da‘wa Movement in Basra, which attracted many political opponents of Saddam Hussein's regime. His movement soon became famous in Iraq, Iran, and elsewhere.
In July 2003, he was chosen to be a member of the Interim Governing Council. Salim headed the Council under the system of a rotating presidency. The martyr also took the initiative to establish the "Shiite House" (Al‑Bayt al‑Shi‘i) as an umbrella for Shiite political forces, and he was elected its head – a step aimed at coordinating efforts and unifying the Shiite ranks within the general national framework, not at the expense of national partnership with the rest of the Iraqi components.
In this atmosphere, global arrogance (the US‑led occupation), regional intelligence agencies, and remnants of Iraqi intelligence were plotting to strike the symbols of the Islamic movement and Iraqi leaderships. So he was targeted by a car bomb on the morning of 17 May 2004, his soul ascending to the heavenly kingdom, laden with the wounds of the long struggle, his body drenched in blood and injuries at the hands of terrorism and global arrogance.
Izz al‑Din Salim was assassinated on the same date on which he had entered Iraq one year earlier. With him fell his comrade‑in‑arms and close friend Talib Qasim al‑Hajjami (Abu Mohammed al‑Amiri) , his nephew Asaad Abdul Imam Uthman , and four members of his personal protection: Nizar Hussein, Hussein Ni'mah Khalaf, Sadiq Ja'far, Ali Sabbar.
عزالدين سلِم