Muqtada Al-Sadr reflects on 2024, cautions that 2025 could be more challenging

NAJAF– Shiite cleric and leader of the National Shia Current, Muqtada Al-Sadr, issued a statement on X, formerly Twitter, marking the end of 2024, describing the year as one of war, violence, and corruption. He called for unity, reform, and a return to faith to face ongoing challenges. Al-Sadr’s statement painted a grim picture of ongoing crises in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. He criticized the prevalence of corruption, sectarianism, and the pursuit of power among ruling authorities.

Muqtada Al-Sadr’s full statement:

In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

A year filled with wars, killing, terrorism, violence, and corruption has come to an end—after the dirty colonial powers took control over our nations, our lands, and even our sanctities. A year filled with martyrs, wounded individuals, grieving mothers, children, displaced families, detainees, prisoners, and missing persons. Hospitals overflowed with people suffering from disabilities and illnesses.

It was a bitter year, filled with tragedies, sorrows, and the loss of loved ones—men, women, and children.

A year with a bitter taste, where we experienced only normalization [ties with Israel], corruption, and vile domination.

Yes, the curtain has fallen on a year in which Gaza is dying, Lebanon is burning, liberated Syria suffers from hunger and colonization, and Yemen remains under the fire of the (common) enemy—I mean the one who was once common!

A year has passed, and yet our governments, along with many people, remain preoccupied with corruption, extremism, sectarianism, internal conflict, and the abhorrent competition for power—a love and grip over authority for which many dictatorships have fallen, only to be replaced by similar regimes, regrettably.

A year has passed, and calamities have spread everywhere. Yet, many remain heedless, celebrating the end of one year and the start of another—a year that may be worse unless we awaken from this slumber, apathy, dependency, and humiliation.

We must return to God through prayer, obedience, and unity among the righteous reformers. We must not be drawn into the sedition of those who thrive on discord, nor follow the worldly schemers who plot against us to seize a world we have renounced, though it has not renounced us.

Fear God, do not waste resources, do not disobey, and do not spread corruption, for God does not love the corrupt.

O God, if we are not deserving of Your mercy, your enemies are certainly deserving of Your punishment. You are the Almighty, the Omnipotent, and the Supreme over Your servants.

O God, preoccupy the oppressors with each other, and deliver us from them unharmed, by the right of Muhammad and his pure, noble family.