The bulletin board outside the ramshackle house on a Karbala alley displays edicts by Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric.
Buying a satellite dish is fine, but not if used to capture pornographic broadcasts, one edict, or fatwa, says. Another tells wives of long-missing men they cannot remarry before they are certain that their spouse is dead. Yet another declares delegates to a proposed constitutional conference must be elected, not appointed.
Other fatwas posted outside al-Sistani's Karbala office touch on whether Muslims should eat meat imported from non-Muslim nations, smuggling, arms dealing and allegations that Shiites are taking over mosques used by followers of the mainstream Sunni sect.
Politics and religion, strictly kept apart during decades of Baath party rule, are interwoven in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq where almost unfettered freedoms and widespread distrust of politicians have thrust clerics on to center stage.
The rise of Iraq's Shiite clerics to prominence is no mystery.
During Saddam's Baathist rule, authorities clamped down on any sign of religious fundamentalism. They had Sunni Muslim clerics on a short leash, but used brutal methods to deal with their Shiite counterparts, partly because of Iraq's traditional animosity toward Shiite Iran and because the Shiites were the repressed majority in an Iraq that he and his Sunni Muslim ruling clique repressed.
An additional threat came from the very character of Shiism, whose followers are expected to accord senior clerics a major say in how lives are lived, something that Saddam's Baath wanted to monopolize.
Over the weekend, Karbala — a holy Shiite city south of Baghdad — provided a potent example of the clerical domination of the political landscape in today's Iraq, something that many Iraqis fear would eventually bring about a clerical government like the one in neighboring Iran.
An estimated one million pilgrims descended over the weekend to mark the birthday of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the last of the 12 Shiite imams, or saints, who disappeared in the 9th century but is believed by devout Shiites to be waiting to return and rule the world.
The more pious among those who thronged the ancient city came on foot from Shiite towns and villages across southern Iraq, where Shiites make up the overwhelming majority. The rest came in buses, pickup trucks and even horse-drawn carts, carrying portraits of their revered imams.
The faithful multitudes, mostly poor Iraqis who cannot afford a hotel room, spent their night at the plaza of the domed shrine of Imam Hussein, or "Prince of the Martyrs," whose 7th century slaying during battle in Karbala launched the Shiite sect. Most others spent the night on the sidewalks and streets, using blankets they brought along for beds.
The celebrations, however, took place against a political backdrop.
Fearing a bomb attack like the one that killed a senior Shiite cleric and more than 80 others in the holy city of Najaf on Aug. 29, the pilgrims were thoroughly searched by gunmen and volunteers manning checkpoints on streets leading to the shrine.
Sheik Zein el-Abidin, a cleric who supports radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, was on duty at one checkpoint. With a designer holster and pistol visible from under his clerical robe, he proudly declared himself a "platoon commander from the Imam al-Mahdi Army," a militia set up by al-Sadr which his aides now say is the nucleus for a self-styled government he declared Friday.
Next to the main gate of the Imam Hussein shrine, a banner declares: "Any constitution imposed on the Iraqi people will be a prelude to the return of dictatorship and will destined to fail." The author is Mohammed Taqi al-Mudaris, a little-known senior cleric who has recently returned from exile in neighboring Syria.
While the pilgrims, some with tearful eyes, murmured prayers and supplications in the Imam Hussein shrine, hundreds of al-Sadr supporters marched on the streets, chanting his name and declaring their support for his "government."
The part pertaining to his government, announced in a Friday sermon in the nearby town of Kufa, was in leaflets distributed in Karbala over the weekend. "I have set up some ministries for our new state — the state of honor and dignity, the state of freedom and democracy," it quoted al-Sadr, 30 and the son of a religious leader assassinated in 1999.
"What government?" asked Jamal abu Ghadeir, a 43-year-old resident of Karbala. "Muqtada's policies are not helping Iraqi at this point."
Al-Sadr's representative in Karbala, Sheik Khalid al-Kazimi, was at pains to find a logical explanation for his boss's declaration.
"The world judges everything on material grounds, but now they see this young man, his popular base and his mostly unarmed army and wonder: where does he get the strength from? It does not matter if the world fights us. Our strength comes from God."