Seventeen people dead from a car bomb is seventeen too many. What makes the murder of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim complicated is the fact that he was a polite advocate for theocracy, based in Tehran and obviously in political harmony with Iran's mullahs. Statements he made in May are far better examples of his intent for Iraq than the conciliatory jargon spewed a couple of months later for the benefit of Baghdad's Governing Council:

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, head of the Iran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said his group does not want a secular government "because a secular government doesn't respect religion."

The group wants "a democratic government that respects Islam," he said.

...In a speech Saturday to a huge crowd of supporters, al-Hakim called for a "modern Islamic" system in Iraq.

On Tuesday, he said, "As a supreme council we call for an Islamic state because we are Islamic" - but "not at the exclusion of others."

State-established religion is, of course, the height of exclusion. In spite of his poisonous agenda, Mohammed Baqir didn't deserve death. So the question remains: who killed him? Ba'athists haven't demonstrated any active hostility to foreign elements inside the country - could this be a turning point? Tacitus believes this to be the beginning of sectarian violence, though one of his suspects, Moqtada al-Sadr, seems just as radical as Mohammed Baqir, only intransigent and unable to politically adapt.

As I said on Tacitus: If this is a battle between radical Shiite gangsters, it may fall into a similar phenomenon of rampant crime, murder and market shootouts between Japanese Yakuza factions that popped up in 1946 and 1947. From that perspective, it's less troubling than truly widespread violence - or direct attacks on Allied troops. I'll draw out some Yakuza accounts and observations this weekend - and keep on eye on Iraq in the meantime.

UPDATE: 85 dead. The Iraqis are being forced to learn painful lessons about the sort of hate and malevolence a nation inherits when it joins the ranks of liberal democracies - how fragile the peace of freedom is. Horrifying as it is, they'll triumph.

UPDATE II: 107 dead. And this may, indeed be another sign of invasion by Islamofascists - not, thankfully, a Shiite civil war. (Via Instapundit.)