Saddam Hussein’s loss to the U.S.-led coalition in 1990-91 ushered in a new dynamic era of indigenization among the Iraqi Arab Shi‘i community, led by the influential cleric Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. Although the Iraqi Shi‘a are often referred to as a collective, a close examination of intra-Shi‘i relations in Iraq since 1991 reveals multiple centers of power, authority and concomitant conflicts. These conflicts occurred between religious leaders based in Najaf and Karbala, populist preachers in Baghdad, religio-political activists, and politicians, among others. All of these actors struggled to define Iraqi Shi‘i communal identity in the face of a regime determined to redefine Iraqi national identity along sectarian lines (as shown convincingly by Dawisha and Baram). This process of sectarian formation played a significant role in a widening gap between different constituencies within the Shi‘i community, and holds relevance as a corrective to monolithic historiographies of the Iraqi Shi‘a as a united community. Visser, Cole, Patel, Rahimi and Khalaji have made meaningful contributions to the study of the Shi‘a of Iraq during the interwar period (1991-2003), but no previous academic study focuses on the ideological and sociological strategies employed by Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (father of Muqtada). Did al-Sadr have a coherent strategy for the establishment of an indigenous Iraqi Arab Shi‘ism? This paper draws upon the primary source writings of al-Sadr in his published legal writings titled Ma Wara al-Fiqh (What is behind Jurisprudence) and Fiqh al-Asha'ir (Tribal Jurisprudence) as well as newly published collections of his Friday sermons given between 1998 and his assassination in 1999. By performing a close reading of al-Sadr’s writings, while cross-referencing archival newspaper material and secondary literature extant in Arabic and English on the Sadrist movement, this paper offers a more nuanced analysis of the factors that have shaped one competing version of Iraqi Shi‘i identity. In doing so, this paper constructs a more complete picture of a community experiencing internal and external dynamic processes of evolution and conflict.