Although the Iraqi Shi‘a are often referred to as a collective, a close examination of intra-Shi‘i relations in Iraq reveals multiple centers of power, authority and concomitant conflicts. Conflicts between leaders in the hawza (religious educational centers) and outside of it, populist preachers, religio-political activists, politicians, among others, abound. Has there ever been such a dichotomy as the “vocal” hawza (al-hawza al-natiqa) versus the “silent” hawza (al-hawza al-samita), as Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr claimed in his 1990s sermons in the Shi‘i suburbs of Baghdad? In the 1990s, as part of the Iraqi regime’s strategy of divide and conquer with regard to Shi‘i clerical leadership, a widening gap appeared between different constituencies within the Shi‘i community, a period that only now can be accurately studied with the opening of Ba‘ath archives and oral histories that were nearly impossible to access until the 2003 U.S. invasion. The dynamics of intra-Shi‘i relations holds relevance as a corrective to monolithic historiographies of the Iraqi Shi‘a as a united community. Visser, Cole, Patel and Rahimi have made meaningful contributions to the study of the Shi‘a of Iraq during the interwar period (1991-2003), but few studies focus on the dynamics of power and religious politics that characterized the relationship between Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (father of Muqtada) and the so-called “traditional” leaders of the hawza in Najaf, chief of whom was Ayatollah al-Khu’i and his designated successor, Ayatollah Sistani. Were the Shi‘i leaders in Najaf and Karbala antagonist towards al-Sadr and his urban followers in Baghadad? What was the actual relationship between Sadr and the Saddam regime? Did al-Sadr make meaningful and long-lasting intellectual contributions to the Shi‘i hawza curriculum and education system, or was he primarily a Shi‘i religio-political activist, or both? Is it possible to see an evolution in intra-Shi‘i relations during this crucial and understudied period in Iraqi history? This paper will address these questions using several sources – Ba’ath archives, oral histories, new Arabic publications from Najaf, and Sadr’s writings to construct a more complete picture of a community experiencing internal and external dynamic processes of evolution and conflict.