Ayatollah Sistani's Stances and Viewpoints Regarding Codification of Modern Iraq Constitution

This paper intends to study the role of Ayatollah Sistani, source of religious imitation, in political developments in post-Saddam Iraq, as an influential and active agent, as well as the quality of his interaction with the political and social structure in Iraq, particularly the codification procedure of Iraq's Constitution, through agent-structure analytical framework. The fall of the Baath regime by the U.S. and its allies in 2003 gave an opportunity to the Shia Iraqi Muslims to take control of the affairs in Iraq, thanks to their majority and their deprivation from the political scene in the reign of the Baath Party. This also boosted the power of sources of religious imitation such as Ayatollah Sistani. On this basis, we are after finding an appropriate answer to this question: How far did Ayatollah Sistani's views affect the procedure for codification of Iraq's Constitution? In response to the question, this paper hypothesizes that political views and jurisprudential stance by Ayatollah Sistani played a key role in codification of modern Iraq's Constitution. The bulk of the paper is therefore, on studying the role and quality of such influence.