Muwaffaq al-Rubaie

Mowaffak al-Rubaie موفق الربيعي
Mowaffak Baqer al-Rubaie, April 2007
Member of the Council of Representatives
In office April 2009 – March 2010
President	Jalal Talabani
Prime Minister	Nouri al-Maliki
National Security Advisor
In office April 2004 – April 2009
Member of the Iraqi Governing Council
In office 13 July 2003 – 1 June 2004
Preceded by	Council created
Succeeded by	Council dissolved
Personal details
Born	1947 Kadhimiya, Iraq
Nationality	Iraqi
Political party	Independent Islamic Dawa Party (until 1991)
Residence	Baghdad
Alma mater	College of Medicine, University of Baghdad School of Medicine, King's College London
Profession	Statesman, Civil rights campaigner
Religion	Shia Islam

Dr Mowaffak Baqer al-Rubaie (alternative transliterations Muwaffaq al-Rubaie and Muwaffaq al-Rubay'i) (Arabic: موفق الربيعي) is a distinguished Iraqi statesman and active civil rights campaigner.

He was appointed as a member of the 25 member Iraqi Governing Council by the Coalition Provisional Authority in July 2003. In April 2004, in recognition of his astute understanding of the risks and challenges faced by Iraq, he was appointed as National Security Advisor (NSA) by the Coalition Provisional Authority. He held this post for its full 5-year term until April 2009, when he was appointed as an MP in Iraq's Council of Representatives (Iraq's Parliament), a role he held until Parliament's dissolution in March 2010.

A Shia Muslim and neurologist by training, al-Rabai'i was born in Kadhimiya in 1947 to a Shia father and a Sunni mother, Rubaie graduated top of his class at the Baghdad School of Medicine in 1977 and gained his MRCP (Membership of the Royal College of Physicians) whilst at King's College Medical School in London in 1979. In his student years, Rubaie was a protégé of the leading intellectual Shia theologian of his time, Grand Ayatollah Syed Mohammad Baqir Al-Sadr, the founder of the Islamic Da'awa party, which served as the main opposition to Saddam Hussein's repressive Ba'ath regime. Rubaie was a pivotal figure in the movement from its very beginning which brought him into direct conflict with Saddam's regime for which he was tortured on three separate occasions and sentenced to death in absentia the day after leaving Iraq to complete his medical studies in the UK.

While he was in exile in London from 1979 until 2003, Rubaie embarked on a successful career in both the UK public and private sectors. From 1979 until 1991, Rubaie was the head of Da'awa party's international section and, using his home as his base, was prolific in organising opposition conferences, publications highlighting Saddam's atrocities and fund raising events in order to assist Saddam's countless victims. Following the Gulf War of 1991 and the founding of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) Al Rubaie sought to bring the Da'awa Party into the mainstream of Iraqi opposition with the shared goal of toppling Saddam. This policy however brought him into conflict with the Da'awa hardliners in Tehran and for this reason Rubaie resigned from the Da'awa Party in 1991 to become a leading independent opposition figure.