Shia zealots try to cancel a statue of Baghdad’s founder

THEY WEREAD inspired by activists in America and Britain who toppled statues of Confederate soldiers and 18th-century slave-traders. Their target was 1,000 years older, however. Shia radicals in Iraq want to tear down a bust of Abu Jaafar al-Mansur, which sits on a pedestal in Baghdad (pictured). Mansur, the second Abbasid caliph, who ruled from 754 to 775, created a vast empire and founded Baghdad itself, which he called the “City of Peace”. For a while it was the greatest city in the world.But Mansur is remembered by some as a Sunni tyrant who treated Shias more brutally than Saddam Hussein or the jihadists of Islamic State. He is said to have ordered the poisoning of Imam Jaafar al-Sadiq, the sixth of 12 imams revered by Shias. This recently led to small protests at the statue and calls for its destruction. “The continued existence of this statue in Baghdad is a disgrace, and we can only regain some honour when it is demolished,” reads a statement by Yasser al-Habib, an influential Shia cleric based in England.