After Mosul fell to the Islamic State (IS) on June 10, 2014, and the latter continued its advance toward Baghdad, Iraq’s Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a statement June 13, calling on all Iraqis to join the front in support of the Iraqi armed forces.

As a result, volunteers were organized into military units that later became known as the Popular Mobilization Units, which included a number of religious seminary students and teachers from Najaf, who joined the fight wearing their religious garb.

Those clerics performed a number of tasks, as they took part in military operations and provided ideological and spiritual support to their fellow combatants, while ensuring that the behavior of fighters remained in line with the morality of religious edicts, and precluded the commission of violations and unacceptable conduct.

Moreover, in February, Sistani issued a set of instructions to those engaged in fighting against IS, including a number of moral and humanitarian guidelines on how to treat enemy troops, prisoners and civilians on the battlefield. From this point of view, the presence of clerics among volunteer forces was considered highly important, as it served to maintain social order and monitored the combatants’ commitment to moral conduct in battle, particularly in a context where Iraqi judicial institutions are extremely weak and have lost their authority over many aspects of public life, including the military.