Abstract
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.
Iraq today in the thoughts of al-Wardi: The rule of the preachers. By Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael
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