“On Friday, 29 August [2003], as Ayatollah [Mohammed] Baqir al-Hakim was emerging from the south entrance to the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf [Iraq], having just delivered the weekly sermon, he and nearly a hundred other people were killed by a powerful car bomb. …In the few weeks before his death the Ayatollah had established himself as the key Shi’a political leader and, by his carefully crafted statements, as the voice of moderation.”
– Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, Page 172