PATRIOTIC DUTY:

[I]n the face of concerns over the growing power of Iran and its militia proxies amid a sectarian war in Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani has made one of his biggest interventions in Iraqi politics, to try to strengthen the Iraqi state, experts say.

For more than two months he has issued instructions, through a representative during Friday sermons, to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to hold corrupt officials accountable, to reform the judiciary and to support the national security forces instead of Iran-backed militias. Ayatollah Sistani's son, meanwhile, has kept up direct phone communication to the prime minister's office, pushing for quicker reforms.

This latest intervention has provoked a new round of questioning by political leaders and diplomats in Baghdad: As Ayatollah Sistani has stepped in, once again, in the name of helping a country plagued by crisis, is he actually creating a fundamental shift toward clerical rule?

"Many people are surprised, very surprised, when they see Sistani so involved in politics," said a senior Shiite leader in Baghdad who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen as critical of Ayatollah Sistani. Referring to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he said, "In reality, in practice, he is doing what Khamenei does, and what Khomeini did." [...]

As the supreme Shiite spiritual leader -- whose religious authority surpasses that of Iran's supreme leader -- he instructs the pious in how to pray, how to wash and what to eat. Through his website, he recently advocated the use of body armor by fighters battling the Islamic State, prohibited women from using cellphones to contact strange men and advised that men should not have goatees.

Despite his undeniably powerful influence, his public role in Iraq has often been described as "fatherly": guiding politics from on high, intervening at difficult times, but otherwise staying aloof from the fray of governing.

This approach, known in Najaf as the "quietist" tradition, has distinguished Iraq from Iran, and Najaf from Iran's holy city of Shiite scholarship, Qom. It is part of a historical rivalry between the two ancient cities of Shiite scholarship, one that an official in Najaf described as being "like Oxford and Harvard."

But amid the current crisis gripping Iraq, from the war with the Islamic State to government corruption and the threat Iranian-backed militias and their political leaders pose to Mr. Abadi and the Iraqi state, Ayatollah Sistani has made a new calculation.

"In recent months he felt a great danger on the political and security scene," said Ali Alaq, a Shiite lawmaker in Baghdad. "He felt a patriotic duty to act," he continued, and using an honorific for the ayatollah added, "Sayyid Sistani represents the conscience of the Iraqi people."

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