Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Thomas Arnold, The Preaching of 

Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith,

3d ed. (London: Luzac, 1935); Farhad Daftary, A Short 

History of the Ismailis (Princeton, N.J.: Marcus Weiner, 

1998); Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic 

Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-

ton University Press, 2005), 57–78; Larry Poston, 

Islamic Dawah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activ-

ity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam (Oxford: 

K  178  

daawa

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Oxford University Press, 1992); Jane I. Smith, Islam in 

America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 

160–167.

Daawa Party of Iraq

 

(Religious Call Party 

[Arabic: Hizb al-Daawa al-Islamiyya]; also 

Dawa, Islamic Dawa Party)

The Daawa Party is one of the two leading Shii 

political parties in i

raq

. It was founded in the 

holy city of Najaf by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr 

(d. 1980) and other members of the Shii clergy 

in 1957. Its original purpose was to oppose com-

munist and Arab nationalist movements that 

were gaining strength in Iraq and to reverse the 

declining influence of the Shii 

Ulama

. It drew its 

first recruits from the religious colleges of Najaf 

and  k

arbala

, but traditional-minded ulama did 

not approve of the party’s innovations. To avoid 

detection, the Daawa formed secret cells of party 

members, resembling those of Iraqi communists 

and Baathists. From 1964 to 1968, after the fall 

of the leftist government of Abd al-Karim Qasim 

(d. 1963), Daawa was able to operate more openly 

and recruited new members from college students 

and intellectuals in other Iraqi cities. Many new 

recruits also came from the Thawra district on the 

northeastern edge of b

aghdad

, a low-income quar-

ter (now known as Sadr City) of Shii immigrants 

from the countryside. Outside Iraq, it established 

branches in l

ebanon

,  s

yria

,  i

ran

,  a

Fghanistan

,

and Britain. Strengthening its grip on the coun-

try in the late 1960s, Iraq’s Baath government 

launched a repressive campaign against the Shia, 

forcing Shii groups to go underground.

Daawa leaders were executed by the govern-

ment during the 1970s, but the party was still 

able to organize antigovernment demonstrations 

on major Shii religious holidays. Party activ-

ism intensified in the aftermath of the i

ranian

r

evolUtion

 

oF

 1978–79, which was inspired by 

Ayatollah r

Uhollah

 k

homeini

 (d. 1989), a senior 

Iranian cleric who had lived and taught in Najaf 

from 1964 to 1978. The goals and tactics of 

Daawa became more radical. It called for estab-

lishing an Islamic government in Iraq, created a 

terrorist operations unit, and conducted armed 

attacks against the Baathists and their allies in 

other Persian g

UlF

  s

tates

 during the Iran-Iraq 

war of 1980–88. It attempted to assassinate Iraq’s 

president, s

addam

 h

Usayn

, and other government 

officials, and it was allegedly involved in the 

bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait in 1983. 

The Iraqi government officially outlawed Daawa 

in 1980 and declared that party members would 

be subject to execution. Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr 

and other Shii leaders were arrested and put to 

death. Many members fled to Iran, where they 

set up a headquarters in exile, supported by that 

country’s revolutionary government. Although the 

party has preached peaceful coexistence between 

Sunnis and the Shia, together with Iraqi national 

unity, the leadership and ideology of the party has 

largely been shaped by Shii doctrines and sym-

bols. For example, party tracts at the time stated 

that the highest levels of leadership should be 

held by mujtahids, a designation for Shii religious 

authorities. Nevertheless, during their exile in 

Iran, effective leadership of the party shifted to 

lay members, such as Ibrahim Jaafari (b. 1947), a 

physician who had joined the party in the 1960s.

The party remained a staunch opponent of 

the government of Saddam Husayn but shifted to 

improve its relations with Western countries after 

the Gulf War of 1990–91, when an international 

coalition army drove Husayn’s Iraqi forces out 

of Kuwait. After Husayn’s government was over-

thrown by the United States in 2003, the Daawa 

Party reestablished itself in Iraq, and party mem-

bers joined the new provisional government. In 

January 2005, it became a leading member of the 

United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of political par-

ties elected to govern the occupied country until 

a constitutional government could be formed. 

Daawa members won control of important gov-

ernment ministries, and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the 

head of Daawa, became the country’s new prime 

minister. He was succeed by another party loyal-