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An Iranian national shops at a popular market in the holy Iraqi Shiite city of Najaf. Recently, the city where millions of international pilgrims visit every year has been spared the worst of Iraq's violence. Haidar Hamdani /AFP/Getty Images hide caption

An Iranian national shops at a popular market in the holy Iraqi Shiite city of Najaf. Recently, the city where millions of international pilgrims visit every year has been spared the worst of Iraq's violence.

The holy Iraqi city of Najaf has a brand-new and appropriately holy shopping center: the Najaf City Mall.

Under banners with Muslim prayers, children rampage through an adventure playground, while conservative women in long black robes browse for cute outfits to wear when they're home with family.

Think of Iraq and maybe you picture a desert battlefield: the self-styled Islamic State slugging it out with the Iraqi army while American warplanes drop bombs from the sky. But life there's not like that for everyone, not all the time. In fact, because of famous holy shrines in Iraq, millions of international pilgrims actually visit every year.

Mohammed Baderi is one of four main investors in the mall. A chatty man with calluses on his forehead from frequent praying, he sits on a neon plastic chair surrounded by families having dinner, and tells me why he came back from 24 years in the U.S. to open a mall.

"You know this is our mother homeland," he says "This city [deserves] this kind of business."

Najaf, about a three-hour drive south of Baghdad, is beloved as one of Shiite Islam's holiest places, the burial place of the revered Imam Ali. But Baderi felt Najafis needed opportunities as well as blessings.

"So first of all we need to look for the new jobs, to improve their income," he says. It wasn't easy to make it happen; access to credit in Iraq is all but impossible, for example, and they still have two empty floors to fill with outlets.

But at the moment, he reckons the mall employs 300 or 400 people, and he has grand visions for the future. He sees Najaf as a kind of Shiite Vatican City, drawing visitors and money from all over. Recently, the city has been spared the worst of Iraq's violence, and with a little ingenuity and resilience, there's business to be done.

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With Shopping, Holy Sites, Najaf Offers Respite From Iraq's Violence