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==History==
Hizb Al-Dawa was formed in 1957<ref>Dagher, Sam, "[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html Ex-Hussein Officials and Others Go on Trial]", ''The New York Times'', 28 December 2008</ref> by [[Mohammed Saqik]]. His aim was to create a party and a movement which would promote Islamic values and ethics, political awareness, combat [[secularism]], and create an Islamic state in Iraq. This came at a time when politics in Iraq was dominated by secularist [[Arab nationalist]] and [[socialist]] ideas. [[Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr]] – who was widely recognized as a leading philosopher, theologian, and political theorist – quickly emerged as the leading member. One of their main goals was to destroy [[Saddam Hussein]]. It had been Sadr who laid the foundations for the party and its ideology, based on [[Wilayat Al-Umma]] (Governance of the people). A [[Islamic Dawa Party in Lebanon|twin party]] was also founded in [[Lebanon]] by clerics who had studied in Najaf and supported Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr's vision of a resurgent Islam.
Hizb Al-Dawa gained strength in the 1970s recruiting from among the Shi'a [[ulama]] and youth. It waged an armed [[insurgency]] against the Iraqi government which initiated a crackdown on Shi'a political activism, driven in part by the secular nature of the Ba'athist ideology and in part by their view of a politicized Shi'a as a threat to the stability of the regime. During the 1970s, the government shut down the Shi'a journal ''Risalat al-Islam'' and closed several religious educational institutions. The government passed a law obligating Iraqi students of the [[hawza]] to undertake national military service. The Ba'athists then began specifically targeting Al-Dawa members, arresting and imprisoning them from 1972 onwards. In 1973, someone ;) killed the alleged head of Al-Dawa's Baghdad branch in prison. In 1974, 75 Al-Dawa members were arrested and sentenced to death by the Ba'athist revolutionary court.<ref>Aziz, "The Role of Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr," p. 212.</ref> In 1975, the government canceled the annual procession from Najaf to Karbala, known as marad al-ras. Although subject to repressive measures throughout the 1970s, large-scale opposition to the government by Al-Dawa goes back to the Safar Intifada of February 1977. Despite the government's ban on the celebration of marad al-ras, Al-Dawa organized the procession in 1977. They were subsequently attacked by police.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2004/issue2/jv8n2a2.html |title=Archived copy |accessdate=2006-10-05 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060907155255/http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2004/issue2/jv8n2a2.html |archivedate=2006-09-07 |df= }}</ref> After this period it also interacted with the Ayatollah [[Ruhollah Khomeini]], the future spiritual leader of [[Iran]], during his exile in [[Najaf]] in Iraq. Widely viewed in the West as a [[Terrorism|terrorist]] organization at the time, the Dawa party was banned in 1980 and its members sentenced to death [[trial in absentia|''in absentia'']] by the [[Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council]].<ref name="Wright">{{cite book|last=Wright|first=Robin|year=2001|title=Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam|publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]]|isbn=0-7432-3342-5}}</ref>
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