For the Shi’ite majority and its senior religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani, the January elections played out against the background of a longing for justice that has deep spiritual and historical sources as well as more recent sociopolitical roots.
About the Author
Ahmed H. al-Rahim has taught Arabic and Islamic studies at Harvard University. In 2003, he served in Iraq as an advisor on political Islam in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
Although Saddam fell twenty years ago, the politicians who have come after him still think like Baathists. But a new generation has begun making itself heard. It believes in Iraq…
If Iraq is to become the free and self-governing country that an overwhelming majority of its citizens want it to be, a "useable past" made accessible by historical memory will…
If Iraq is successfully to democratize and an inclusive democratic culture is to emerge, the Iraqi state must be reconstituted as a federal and strongly liberal system and thoroughly demilitarized.