Out of 10 clerics that were approached, eight agreed to arrange a pleasure marriage for our reporter. In Kadamiya, Sayyed Raad offered to officiate a pleasure marriage between our reporter and “a young virgin”. The strength of the Shia religious establishment, backed by the intimidatory weight of armed Shia militias, appears to have given Shia clerics a sense of total impunity. Sayyed Raad had said he was a follower of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shia cleric. The ayatollah’s office told the BBC times had changed and it had been erased from his current books.

Source: The Guardian October 06, 2019 08:15 UTC