Acting as an Iraqi First, a Shiite Second

He is a soft-spoken general practitioner whose life’s work has been guiding a secretive Islamic party in exile in Iran and Britain. It has made him both resolute and cautious. He doesn’t even use his real family name.

Now the ascetic man in the background, Ibrahim Jafari, could end up as the prime minister of Iraq.

Jafari isn’t the only candidate hoping to lead the new transitional government after its historic election Jan. 30. Ahmad Chalabi, the flamboyant opposition leader with the up-and-down political career, is waging a strong challenge on grounds that he would be more secular, more capable of talking to the West and more radical in hunting down former Baath Party members who dominated the country under the Saddam Hussein regime.

A third candidate could yet emerge, diplomats here believe. A rumor circulated Saturday that Jafari might relinquish his candidacy in favor of another Shiite Islamist, Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mehdi. A Jafari aide, however, denied that such a move was afoot, just two days before the members of the majority Shiite alliance were to meet to discuss their nominee and possibly put it to a vote.

If Jafari does prevail, the victory will be a surprise turn in a studiously humble life.

With his gray hair, rumpled suits and an uneasy command of English despite having lived in London’s Wembley neighborhood for 14 years, Jafari makes an unprepossessing first impression. He easily gets lost in a crowd.

An observant Shiite Muslim, the 58-year-old Jafari leads a disciplined life. He doesn’t drink, smoke, play cards, go to movies or listen to popular music. His recreation is reading widely, including works on history, economics and secular and religious thinking. Friends say he is noted for his honesty and integrity.

Asked for an example of Jafari’s liberal thinking, an aide, Adnan Ali Kadhimi, said he allowed each of his five children to choose which ayatollah to follow. “He gives them full free choice, but he educates them,” he said.

During his years in Britain, Jafari often attended meetings with party members or sympathizers. He frequently lectured small groups on Islamic topics as well. Although not a cleric, through his scholarship he has reached the rank of a mujtahid, one qualified to give rulings on Islamic texts.

Idel Abdullah, a kidney specialist in London and longtime friend and party colleague, said Jafari “devoted his whole life to Islamic studies and politics and working in exile for the Iraqi people against the tyrant Saddam Hussein.” He said his friend was “very intelligent and has the greatest memory of anyone I have ever known.”

Instead of calling himself the president or director of his party, he says on his business card that he is its coordinator, in a typically modest gesture.

But that doesn’t mean he is a man without strong ideas.

The head of Iraq’s oldest Islamic party, the Islamic Dawa, or the Islamic Call, Jafari has promised to improve relations with Iran, fight the insurgents, improve the economy and make a place in the government for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. He opposes any permanent U.S. bases in his country. He believes that Islamic law, or Sharia, should be one of the main sources of legislation.

As a moderate and nonviolent Islamist and a patriotic Iraqi, he believes that he can be an acceptable representative for Sunni Muslims, Christians and nonobservant members of society as well as his own Shiite community. He says that he would behave as an Iraqi first, and a Shiite second.

But his candidacy arouses misgivings. Some Iraqi women fear that he is too religious and will curtail their rights. Others, recalling that he spent the first nine years of his exile in Tehran and that the Iranians allegedly succeeded in penetrating some cells of the Dawa Party in those years, worry that he may be delivering Iraq to the Iranian sphere of influence.

He dismisses the charges.

“There is no justification for such fears,” he said in a recent interview with The Times.

Referring to Iran, he said that Iraq’s relations would be the same as “to any other neighboring country like Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Syria.”

“True, there might be a special quality to the relationship with Iran, since it is a Shiite country with a large Shiite population. But you have to separate the Shiite religion from the people who follow it, who simply belong to the population of each country.”

As to bases in Iraq, he says the United States and other countries should stay only as long as the new government requires military help.

“When the Iraqi security forces are self-sufficient, then the presence of foreign forces would not be justified, either troops or bases,” he said. “I am not talking about a day, a week or a month from now. It will take some time.”

He also emphasizes reaching out to other groups.

“Nobody can rule Iraq unless he would be on the side of all Iraqis and represent all the Iraqis. Whether the ruler is a Sunni or a Shiite, an Arab or a Kurd, does not matter,” he said. “To lead, he must represent all.”

But his attitude in many areas, for instance the rights of women, is governed by lifelong Islamic beliefs that may be in conflict with more secular views held in many quarters.

In the early days of the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council, Jafari was part of a group that moved for Sharia to govern family status, including marriage, divorce and inheritance. “Islam makes a woman the responsibility of her father until she marries,” he said, “and then she is the responsibility of her husband.”

He also annoyed some women by declining to the shake their hands because of the tradition that considers touching a member of the opposite sex outside the family haram, or forbidden.

But he recently publicly signaled that he would not try to be dogmatic about religion in his political life. “Seeing how society is open and diverse, it is normal to revise our ideas,” he told reporters.

There is little doubt that Islam would remain his starting point. Speaking to reporters Thursday, he said the constitution and government “should, in essence, not contradict the majority religion, which in this case is Islam.”

What does that mean? Asked whether Jafari would ban the sale of alcohol, for instance, Kadhimi said, “This he will leave to the parliament to think about. This is not his priority. Security is the issue, improving the economy, improving services. These are the priorities.”

Jafari was born in Karbala, a Shiite holy city, in 1947, and joined the Dawa Party in 1968 while he was a student. He graduated from Mosul University in 1974 with a medical degree and became one of the party’s major activists in northern Iraq. In 1980, during a Baathist purge, he escaped to Iran, where for secrecy he stopped using the family name Ashaiqer and adopted Jafari. Nevertheless, two of his brothers were executed in Iraq, Kadhimi said.

In 1989, Jafari moved to London, where he headed the Dawa Party branch. In 2003, he returned to Iraq, joined the Governing Council and, in the summer of 2004, became one of two deputy presidents.

Although a longtime exile, his recent work has raised his profile in Iraq, and several polls have shown him to be the most popular politician in the country.

Many Sunnis, on the other hand, remain highly suspicious of Dawa.

Founded in 1957, Dawa managed to stay alive underground in Iraq from 1980, when it was banned, until the arrival of U.S. troops two years ago. It survived through small, secret cells, supported by its main exile communities in Tehran, London and Damascus, the Syrian capital.

Over the years, Dawa was credited with several attempts on Hussein’s life. Some say it also was responsible for an attack in 1996 against Uday Hussein, which left the dictator’s late son partly disabled until his death in 2003.

In the 1980s, Dawa was accused of carrying out attacks outside Iraq, allegedly including a suicide bombing at the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut that killed 27 people, and bombings in December 1983 at the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait that killed six.

Asked about these, Kadhimi said they were not really the work of Dawa and were instead carried out by Iranian intelligence. Iran used Dawa’s name to stain the party’s reputation, he said, because Dawa was refusing to submit to Iranian influence.

As for Jafari himself, he was always “the most nonviolent person,” Kadhimi said. “He does not believe in violence at all. He believes in words, words that can go right through to the heart and turn the enemy to a friend.”

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Times staff writers Patrick J. McDonnell in Baghdad and Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report.