Tayyar.
Portrait of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani IQ flag

IQ flag Iraq Other

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani

علي السيستاني
Other Independent Verified

Iraqi Grand Ayatollah; top Shia religious authority in Iraq and the most influential Shia cleric outside Iran. Quietist tradition (limited direct political role) but his fatwas have shaped Iraqi politics decisively — most notably the 2014 fatwa calling for resistance to ISIS that brought hundreds of thousands of volunteers into the Iraqi armed forces.

Country
Iraq
Party
Independent / unaligned
Role
Other

Individual position

Scored from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's own documents rather than inherited from a party — capturing where this figure diverges from the party line. Provisional, document-grounded estimate; see methodology.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's spider profile
Economic → Market Social → Libertarian State & religion → Secular state Liberal democracy → Strong commitment West alignment → Pro-Western Regional stance → Stability/normalization Palestinian question → Pro-Palestinian rights Civil liberties → Expand Regime stance → pro-regime Pan-Arab vs particularist → pan-Arab Centralism vs federalism → federalist Traditionalism vs modernization → modernizing Gender equality → Gender equality Iran posture → Pro-Iran / aligned Press freedom → Free press Sectarian power-sharing → Post-sectarian / civic state
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
Axis scores
Economic —
Social —
State & religion —
Liberal democracy —
West alignment —
Regional stance —
Palestinian question —
Civil liberties —
Regime stance +5.0
Pan-Arab vs particularist —
Centralism vs federalism —
Traditionalism vs modernization —
Gender equality —
Iran posture -3.0
Press freedom —
Sectarian power-sharing +2.0

On the record

Quotes attributed to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that have passed verification. Each carries a year, the context of the statement, and at least one source citation. Browse the full corpus or play the "Who said it?" game.

  • Citizens who are able to bear arms and fight terrorists in defense of their country, their people, and their holy places must volunteer to join the security forces.
    إنّ على المواطنين القادرين على حمل السلاح وقتال الإرهابيين دفاعاً عن بلدهم وشعبهم ومقدّساتهم أن يتطوّعوا للانضمام إلى القوّات الأمنيّة.
    2014 Sistani's fatwa, delivered in Karbala on 13 June 2014, that mobilized the Hashd al-Sha'abi against ISIS — arguably the single most consequential sentence in 21st-century Iraqi politics. aljazeera.com

Source documents

Texts tied to this politician — speeches, interviews, op-eds. The scoring pipeline reads these when scoring positions against documents. All documents →

How to cite

Each record carries a retrieval date because the dataset is live — individual entries update as verification deepens. Use the per-record citation when referencing this specific profile; use the dataset citation below when referencing the project as a whole.

In-text: (Gara, 2026)

Per-record citation

APA 7Reference list · academic default 
Gara, T. (2026). Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani [Politician profile]. Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset. Retrieved June 21, 2026, from https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/pol/sistani
Chicago author-dateCommon in political-science journals 
Gara, Tarek. 2026. "Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani." Politician profile, Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset. Accessed June 21, 2026. https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/pol/sistani.
BibTeXFor LaTeX / Zotero / reference managers 
@misc{tayyar-sistani,
  title     = {{Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani}},
  author    = {Gara, Tarek},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset},
  type      = {Politician profile},
  url       = {https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/pol/sistani},
  urldate   = {2026-06-21},
  note      = {First-pass entry; second-pass external review planned before publication.}
}

Dataset / working-paper citation

If you're citing Tayyar as a project rather than this individual record.

APA 7Preprint 
Gara, T. (2026). Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset [Preprint]. Retrieved June 21, 2026, from https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/paper
BibTeXPreprint 
@unpublished{tayyar-preprint,
  title  = {{Tayyar: A MENA political-position dataset}},
  author = {Gara, Tarek},
  year   = {2026},
  type   = {Preprint},
  url    = {https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/paper},
  urldate = {2026-06-21},
  note   = {Living document, regenerated from the live dataset on page load.}
}

First-pass entry; second-pass external review planned before publication.