Ayatollah Sistani

(Newser) - After a historic private meeting with a senior Shiite cleric in Iraq, Pope Francis appealed for religious tolerance. "We need one another," the pope said later in a speech on the desert plain of Ur, believed to be the birthplace of Abraham. "Hostility, extremism and violence are...

(Newser) - Iraq's top Shiite cleric issued a statement during Friday prayers today, calling on everyone—Shiite and Sunni alike—to fight back against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the New York Times reports. It is "the legal and national responsibility of whoever can hold a weapon, to...

(Newser) - The Iraqi government has flubbed virtually all of the legal benchmarks proscribed by the US occupation. Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish blocs in Iraq's legislature have so far failed to agree on watershed issues like distributing oil wealth, debaathification, and curbing sectarian violence; now scorekeepers are saying no major legislation will...