Leading Iraqi Shiite clerics called in sermons Friday for alcohol to be banned and women to be veiled, with one luminary in this holy city urging that Islamic rules be imposed on the Christian minority.
Muqtada Sadr, the 31-year-old son of the revered Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr who was murdered in 1999, told thousands of faithful that the "banning of alcohol and the wearing of the veil should be spread to all and not only to Muslims."
"Alcohol and the display of a woman's body are forbidden for us Muslims, as they are for Christians, upon whom I call to give up these banned things," he said.
"I call upon Christians not to be the corrupt of the world," he said in Kufa, the city 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Baghdad where Imam Ali was assassinated in 661 AD.
Some Protestant Christian denominations ban consumption of alcohol by their members, with others also imposing strict dress codes on women adherents, but these represent a very small minority of Christians.
There are about 500,000 Christians in Iraq, a country of 25 million, and the community enjoyed relative freedom under Saddam.
Sadr, who unlike his father does not have religious authority to interpret the holy texts, called for liquor shops to be closed down, through non-violent means. He defended the general principle of "Vilaya," by which clergymen are involved in public affairs.
The school of thought is opposed by other leading Shiite luminaries of Najaf such as Ali Sistani, who believes in minimal involvement by clerics in politics.
Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr was a more politically active theologian, and his murder was widely attributed to the forces of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.
Friday prayers were either not held or were low-key for the Shiite majority under Saddam, who kept a close watch on the community and crushed a Shiite uprising that followed his defeat in the 1991 Gulf war.
Shiites have been rejoicing in their newfound freedom since Saddam's regime collapsed April 9. Last month hundreds of thousands gathered in another Shiite holy city, Karbala, to mark the seventh-century death in battle of Imam Hussein, the son of Ali.
Muqtada Sadr, meeting later Friday with reporters at his house in Najaf, spoke cautiously about the US presence. He said it was best not to fight US troops, "because of the balance of forces" in favor of the Americans.
In Baghdad's sprawling Shiite shantytown formerly known as Saddam City and now renamed after Sadr, Sheikh Jaber Khafaji told tens of thousands assembled outdoors that bars should be closed, women should be veiled and men should grow their beards.
"From now on, I tell you don't allow the women to go out without veils, not one bit of their hair should appear," said Khafaji, who is close to the Sadr family.
"Don't let the bars open; tell them to close," said Khafaji.
"Those rules should be implemented on everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims, and the Muslims should implement them with more fervour," he said.
The United States has made clear it will not accept a future Iraq run by Muslim clerics although religious leaders have been invited to help form a "mosaic" interim government.
Khafaji asked the population not to mix with US troops, who he accused of inciting the widespread looting that followed the collapse of the regime and of corrupting the population.
"I sometimes see women and children gathering around coalition forces. The soldiers give them sweets and candies but also immoral magazines," he alleged.
Prominent Shiite and Sunni leaders have stressed since Saddam's fall that they are committed to coexistence.
At the Sunni mosque of Abu Hanifa in Baghdad, where a US tank was parked outdoors, Sheikh Moiad called for a united Iraq.
"All Iraqis are the same, they are branches of the same tree," he told 2,000 faithful.
"They should have their own government which must be honest and protect its people, and which must not work with foreign countries," he said.
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