That was before Tamimi, an organizer in the movement of the fiercely nationalist and anti-occupation cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, led hundreds of al-Sadr followers out of Sadr City and "took back" a Sunni mosque in a mixed middle-class neighborhood near Palestine Street, a major thoroughfare south of Sadr City. In one of a number of such mosque seizures that followed the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, al-Sadr's militiamen kicked out the Sunni imam's family and installed Tamimi as the new imam. (The New York Times' Edward Wong reported on the incident. )

Tamimi moved into the house on the mosque grounds. Now his children play in the mosque and a sprinkler waters the lawn. Tamimi, who is a member of al-Sadr's media and education office, crows about the work he and his men are doing for the neighborhood.

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