Greeted by fervent flower-throwing admirers, the leader of Iraq's largest Shiite Muslim group returned triumphantly to his U.S.-occupied homeland Saturday after two decades in Iranian exile and immediately called for creating a "modern Islamic regime."
Still, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, likely to play a prominent role in his country's immediate future, rejected religious extremism even as he denounced the notion of any foreign-installed government to rule Iraq's fractious populace.
"I am a soldier of Islam, serving all the Iraqi people," al-Hakim, his voice forceful and resonant, told 10,000 supporters in the Basra, a southern city and stronghold of Iraq's Shiite majority.
But, he added, "We don't want extremist Islam, but an Islam of independence, justice and freedom."
The return of al-Hakim, anticipated for weeks by his followers, was expected to reinforce Shiite demands for a major role in Iraq's future government after years of repression by Saddam Hussein's minority Sunni-dominated government.
His arrival also complicates the mix of power brokers working with the United States to set up an Iraqi government. The Bush administration fears the formation of an Iran-style clerical regime, and al-Hakim's party is, of all the anti-Saddam groups, the closest to Tehran and the least amenable to long-term dealings with Washington.
In a later speech, the ayatollah emphasized his vision of an Islamic state, saying: "It will be a modern Islamic regime to go along with the modern world ... and it will also bring Iraq to its natural place in the Arab and Islamic world."
Al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, rolled across the Iranian frontier at the Shalamjah border crossing, a desolate no-man's land between two countries that fought a disastrous war from 1980 to 1988 and remain uneasy neighbors.
He had been in exile in Iran since 1980, under protection of its Shiite religious leaders.
Al-Hakim's group, whose English acronym is SCIRI, has long advocated Islamic rule for Iraq. The ayatollah has said in recent days that SCIRI seeks to rebuild the country and establish good relationships with its neighbors.
But he said much work remains.
"We have some freedom, but it is not complete," al-Hakim said. "When we want to move, we find foreign troops. It limits our movement toward reaching our goals."
The religious state described in al-Hakim's speeches Saturday was not the kind that most Westerners associate with fundamentalism. He railed against those who contend that advocates of an Islamic state are people who "know nothing about this world" and are "tucked away in mosques."
"That is not true. We want to build a modern religious state ... using human and other resources, youth and women," al-Hakim said. "Some people think that women should stay at home. Now women these days are half of society ... they should be a principal part of this society."
He also lamented what he called the dictatorships of the Arab and Islamic worlds, and he denounced Saddam's fallen regime for its ethnically divisive policies and repression. Under Saddam's government, he said, "the Iraqi people became slaves."
Al-Hakim remained in Iran during the weeks after the war last month. His brother Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, who commands the group's armed wing, returned to Iraq in advance to pave the way for the ayatollah's return. The brother has been meeting with a core group of returned exiles who appear poised to become the nucleus of a new government installed by U.S. occupation forces.
Many have compared al-Hakim's return to that of Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who spent 14 years in exile in Iraq before returning to lead his country's 1979 Islamic revolution and lead its clerical regime until his death in 1989.
"He is the new Khomeini for us. A majority of Iraqi people want him as our leader," said Mohamed Abu al-Zawra, who lives in Basra and traveled to the border to welcome al-Hakim.
At the border, about 2,000 supporters gathered through the morning with the green flags of Islam awaiting his arrival. When it came, they swarmed his car and chanted, and some tossed flowers and threw themselves at his car as the 100-vehicle convoy rolled away.
In Basra, supporters slapped al-Hakim posters over tiled murals of Saddam. Some admirers wept as his convoy passed by under a giant banner of welcome. Thousands clogged the streets to catch a glimpse.
"This is the day all Iraqis have been waiting for with impatience," said Usama al-Hassan, 30, an Islamic cleric clutching a poster of al-Hakim to his chest as he condemned Saddam. "After the fall of that criminal and his gang, people can finally express their emotions and support."
The Shiite sect of Islam, a minority in the Islamic world, represents a 60 percent majority in Iraq. Iraqi Shiites are Arab, not Persian like their Iranian counterparts, and have a strong sense of Iraqi nationalism.