BAGHDAD, Iraq — He is a soft-spoken general practitioner whose life's work has been guiding a secretive Islamic party in exile in Iran and Britain. It has made him resolute and cautious. He doesn't even use his real family name.

Now the ascetic man in the background, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, will likely end up as the prime minister of Iraq.

It marks a surprise climax to a studiously humble life.

With his gray hair, domed forehead, rumpled suits and an uneasy command of English despite living in London's Wembley neighborhood for 14 years, al-Jaafari makes an unprepossessing first impression.

An observant Shiite, the 58-year-old leads a disciplined life. He doesn't drink, smoke, play cards, go to the movies or listen to popular music. His recreation is reading widely, including works on history, economics and secular and religious thinking. Friends say he is noted for his honesty and integrity.

Asked for an example of al-Jaafari's liberal thinking, an aide, Adnan Ali Kadhimi, said he allowed each of his five children to choose which ayatollah to follow. "He gives them full free choice, but he educates them," he said.

Waning U.S. influence

Al-Jaafari's rise will put a Shiite Islamist in charge of the government for the first time in Iraq's history. It also underscores waning U.S. influence over Iraq's politics. The United States would have preferred to see a secular leader emerge, not an Islamist who once lived in Iran. Jaafari's party is also unlikely to support expanded ties with Israel, for instance, a goal articulated by the United States at the start of the war.

And while al-Jaafari enjoys some support among Iraqis, his new parliament may well be consumed by politicking over constitutional issues rather than creating jobs that Iraqis desperately want and fixing the power supply.

The name of al-Jaafari's Dawa party loosely translates as "Islamic Call" or "Islamic Propagation." While his priorities are protecting the rights of all citizens and ending the war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Islam is at the center of his party's vision for the country.

As a politician, Jaafari presents a blend of a secular style, human-rights rhetoric, and commitment to Islamic values that sometimes seem contradictory to Western observers.

But his friends and allies say no contradiction exists — that he's a pragmatic politician who sees Islam as the best guarantee against more turmoil, and who believes that a modern interpretation of Islam's political role can be found that's acceptable to most who live here.

During his years in Britain, al-Jaafari usually could be found attending meetings with party members or sympathizers. Often he would lecture small groups on Islamic topics as well. Although not a cleric, through his scholarship he has reached the rank of a mushtahid, one authorized to give rulings on Islamic texts.

Instead of calling himself the president or director of his party, he says on his business card that he is its coordinator, in a typically modest gesture.

But that doesn't mean he is a man without strong ideas.

Where he stands

As the head of Iraq's oldest Islamic party, al-Jaafari has promised to improve relations with Iran, fight the insurgents, improve the economy and make a place in the government for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He opposes any permanent U.S. bases in his country. He believes Islamic law, or Shariah, should be one of the main influences of legislation.

"Iraq's minorities must be protected, and they must be given their rights," Jaafari said in a recent interview with The Christian Science Monitor. "But we must also respect the majority, so Islam should be the official religion of the state ... and we shouldn't have any laws that contradict Islam."

As a moderate and nonviolent Islamist and a patriotic Iraqi, he believes he can be an acceptable representative for Sunni Muslims, Christians and nonobservant members of society as well as his own Shiite community. He says he would behave as an Iraqi first and a Shiite second.

Still, his candidacy does arouse misgivings. Some Iraqi women fear he is too religious and will clamp down on their rights. Others, recalling that he spent the first nine years of his exile in Tehran, Iran, and that the Iranians allegedly succeeded in penetrating some cells of the Dawa party in those years, are worried that he might be delivering Iraq to the Iranian sphere of influence.

"There is no justification for such fears," he responded in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times.

Referring to Iran, he said Iraq's relations would be the same as "to any other neighboring country like Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Syria."

"True, there might be a special quality to the relationship with Iran, since it is a Shiite country with a large Shiite population. But you have to separate the Shiite religion from the people who follow it, who simply belong to the population of each country."

As to future U.S. bases in Iraq, he says the United States and other countries should stay in Iraq only as long as the new government requires military help.

"When the Iraqi security forces are self-sufficient, then the presence of foreign forces would not be justified, either troops or bases," he said. "I am not talking about a day, a week or a month from now. It will take some time."

He also emphasizes reaching out to other groups.

"Nobody can rule Iraq unless he would be on the side of all Iraqis and represent all the Iraqis. Whether the ruler is a Sunni or a Shiite, an Arab or a Kurd, does not matter," he said. "To lead, he must represent all."

But his attitude in many areas, for instance the rights of women, is governed by his lifelong Islamic beliefs that might be in conflict with the more secular views held in many quarters of the country.

In the early days of the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council, al-Jaafari was part of a group that moved for Shariah to govern family status, including marriage, divorce and inheritance. At the time, he said, "Islam makes a woman the responsibility of her father until she marries, and then she is the responsibility of her husband."

He also annoyed some women by declining to shake their hands out of the tradition that considers the touch of a member of the opposite sex outside the family as haram, or forbidden.

In public recently, he has signaled to reporters that he would not try to be dogmatic about religion in his public life. "Seeing how society is open and diverse, it is normal to revise our ideas," he said.

But there is little doubt that Islam would remain his starting point. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, he said the constitution and government, "should in essence, not contradict the majority religion, which in this case is Islam."

Asked if al-Jaafari would ban the sale of alcohol, his aide, Kadhimi, said, "This he will leave to the Parliament to think about. This is not his priority. Security is the issue, improving the economy, improving services. These are the priorities."

Escape to Iran

Al-Jaafari was born in Karbala, a holy city for Shiites, in 1947, and joined the Dawa party in 1968 while he was a student. He graduated from Mosul University in 1974 with a medical degree and became one of the party's major activists in northern Iraq. But in 1980, during a Baathist purge, he escaped to Iran, where for the sake of secrecy he stopped using the family name of Al Shaygar and adopted al-Jaafari instead. Nevertheless, two of his brothers were executed in Iraq, Kadhimi said.

In 1989, al-Jaafari relocated to London, where he headed the Dawa party branch. In 2003, he returned to Iraq, joined the Governing Council and, in the summer of 2004, became one of two deputy presidents.

Although a longtime exile, his recent work has raised his profile inside Iraq, and several polls have shown him as ranking as the most popular politician in the country.

A secretive party

But many Sunnis remain highly suspicious of Dawa.

Founded in 1957, Dawa managed to stay alive underground in Iraq from the time it was banned in 1980 until the arrival of U.S. troops two years ago. It survived through small, secret cells, supported by its main exile communities in Tehran, London and Damascus, the capital of Syria.

Over the years, Dawa was credited with several attempts on Saddam's life. Some claim it also was responsible for an attack in 1996 against Odai Hussein, which left the dictator's late son partly disabled until his death in 2003.

In the 1980s, Dawa was accused of carrying out terrorist attacks outside Iraq, allegedly including a suicide bombing against the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, in which 27 people died, and bombings in December 1983 at the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait that killed six people.

Asked about these, Kadhimi said they were not really the work of Dawa and were carried out by Iranian intelligence. Iran used Dawa's name to stain the party's reputation, he said, because Dawa was refusing to submit to Iranian influence.

As for al-Jaafari himself, he was always "the most nonviolent person," Kadhimi said. "He does not believe in violence at all. He believes in words, words that can go right through to the heart and turn the enemy to a friend."

Times staff writers Patrick J. McDonnell in Baghdad and Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report. Several items on al-Jaafari's background were reported by The Christian Science Monitor.