Early Life
Al-Hakim co-founded the modern Islamic political movement in Iraq in the 1960s, along with Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, with whom he worked closely until the latter's death in 1980. Though not among the most hard-line of Islamists, Al-Hakim was seen as dangerous by the ruling Ba'ath regime, largely because of his agitation on behalf of Iraq's majority Shia population (the ruling regime was mostly Sunnis). This led to his arrest in 1972, for promoting Nikah Mut'ah, a legal form of temporary marital relationship in the Shia sect, but he was released shortly thereafter.
He was partially blamed for the uprising in Najaf that occurred in February 1977, and so was arrested again, and this time sentenced to life imprisonment. However, his sentence was commuted and he was released in July 1979. The subsequent eruption of war between Iraq and (largely Shia) Iran led to an ever-increasing distrust of Iraq's Shia population by the ruling Ba'ath party; combined with his previous arrests, this convinced Al-Hakim that it was impossible to continue his Shia advocacy in Iraq, and in 1980 he fled to Iran.
Safely in Iran, Al-Hakim became an open enemy of the Ba'athists, forming the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a revolutionary group dedicated to overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime. In 1983, Hussein responded by arresting 125 members of Al-Hakim's family who had remained in Iraq, and executing 18 of them. This further embittered Al-Hakim towards the Ba'athists, and towards Hussein in particular. With Iranian aid, SCIRI became an armed resistance group, periodically making cross-border attacks on Iraqi facilities, maintaining covert connections with resistance elements within the country, and generally being a perennial thorn in Hussein's side.
The former Iraqi regime feared Hakim because he worked closely with Irans' Ayatollahs. He created the Badar Brigade which fought with the Iranians during the Iran–Iraq War.
Read more about this topic: Mohammad Baqir Al-Hakim
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