Izz al‑Din Salim … He Had to Leave

Manhal Abdul-Amir Al-Murshidi

One full year, no more and no less – that was the span of days the martyr Izz al‑Din Salim spent on the soil of the homeland to which he returned on 17 May 2003, only for his martyrdom to occur on 17 May 2004. His car was bombed after his voice rose in rejection of the American presence, his call for national unity, and his demand for the independence of Iraqi decision‑making. This made him unacceptable to the American administration, the remnants of Saddam’s intelligence services, and the regional intelligence agencies that served them. So the decision, agreed upon by all of Iraq’s enemies, was made: he had to leave. And so his appointment with martyrdom came, and he ascended to be with the truthful and the righteous.

The martyr Izz al‑Din Salim accompanied the very beginnings of the Islamic Da‘wa movement. It resonated with his spirit and his innate faith, steeped in love, dignity, and tranquility – qualities he had acquired in his rural environment and social surroundings in the Al‑Huwayr district. In the prime of his life, he was raised with an Islamic, spiritual, and faith‑based upbringing in a house blessed with generosity, faith, and social standing.

The martyr opened himself to the Da‘wa school from the early days of its foundation by the martyr Sayyid Mohammed Baqir al‑Sadr. He joined the Da‘wa in 1961, when its organisational and mobilisational contours were still incomplete, and its goals, intellectual vision, and Islamic mission were still maturing. He then moved to Basra to attach himself to the martyr Arif al‑Basri, who was supervising the organisations there. He became a member of the Basra Action Committee after 1963.

The martyr Izz al‑Din was distinguished in all phases of his life by the character of intellectual and activist work. He taught in Kuwait after fleeing there, and he was one of the three pillars of Dar al‑Tawhid (along with the late Dr. Dawud al‑Attar and the late Sayyid Hashim al‑Musawi) who enriched the cultural library with the writings of Dar al‑Tawhid. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, he emigrated there, leaving Kuwait behind. He never once compromised his principles and constants throughout his life – this was evident for more than twenty years. He experienced and lived through all the fluctuations, harbingers, paradoxes, and rivalries of the Islamic opposition in Iran. The martyr rose above all the lowly methods used in the atmosphere of competition between factions within and outside the Da‘wa. Among his most notable positions, opinions, and projects at that stage of his life was the founding of the first media institution for the Da‘wa by publishing Majalla al‑Jihad (Jihad Magazine) and then Jaridat al‑Jihad (Jihad Newspaper), in addition to establishing the Union of Islamic Forces, for which he was elected Secretary‑General – along with his insistence on unifying the Iraqi opposition under a single vision and a single framework.

The martyr Izz al‑Din Salim had to leave because he rejected the world of the worldly. During the full year he spent in Iraq after the fall of the idol, he openly rejected the American administration’s interference in Iraqi political affairs – whether through his participation in the Governing Council, then his presidency of it, or through his participation in all of the Council’s decisions. He worked without hesitation to do justice to the oppressed majority of the Iraqi people in the centre and south, in cooperation and coordination with the late Dr. Ahmed Chalabi. That is why he had to leave – indeed, they both had to leave.

The martyr had his vision, which he declared in the Governing Council: that the Marja‘iyya (religious authority) must have its pioneering and leading role, that it must be preserved and respected, and not be made a tool in political competition and factional wrangling. Therefore, he had to leave – not remain.

Among the important principles the martyr emphasised during his presidency of the Governing Council was the call for a state of the human being, under which all the sons of the Iraqi people would gather, relying on Iraqis from inside the country – because there are energies that need to be discovered and opportunities for participation opened for them. Moreover, he stressed the need to reassure the Sunni community, who felt fear and panic about the coming change, and to integrate them into the framework of the state with complete honesty and transparency. Everyone still remembers his call, in his speech, for the necessity of carrying out a national reconciliation with complete clarity. He objected to the refusal of national reconciliation by some parties, saying: “National reconciliation cannot be postponed or joined later; rather, the initiative must come from the Shiites as the victims.” In that call, he cut off the path of the enemies of unity and those who incite sedition and division. That is why he had to leave.

Yes, the martyr Izz al‑Din Salim lived in an atmosphere of optimism that he would contribute to building the Iraqi state. In his last meeting, on the night before his martyrdom, he said: “We are on a good path. Now we are laying the foundations for a state in which the Shiites will have a pioneering political role after long deprivation. But there are many obstacles that we must overcome.” His words pained the hearts of the American intelligence services, the henchmen of the buried Saddam, and the Arab intelligence agencies – those dubious circles that were plotting to strike the symbols of the Islamic movement and the conscious 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.

May God have mercy on the martyr Abdul Zahra Uthman (Izz al‑Din Salim). Peace be upon him the day he was born, the day he was martyred, and the day he is raised to life again.