Iraq today in the thoughts of al-Wardi: The rule of the preachers

In an effort to situate Ali al-Wardi’s larger body of scholarship, this article places him within his Iraqi and international intellectual milieu, highlighting the role of his book Preachers of the Sultan for its grounding of his later works, while at the same time asserting the seriousness with which he took the scholar’s role as an activist to bring knowledge to the public by which to better inform the grounding for, and exercise of, democratic politics. In particular, it highlights the empirical grounding al-Wardi captured through his explication of the Iraqi ‘split personality’ (izdiwajiyyah) as well as the unique role preachers play in dividing the social community through the justification of political power and promotion of sectarianism.