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.
The global democratic decline of the last two decades is rarely discussed in the same breath with the 2003 decision by the United States and Britain to invade Iraq. But…
Although many Iraqi parties continue to be organized along religious or ethnic lines, both the tone and the results of the 2010 parliamentary election campaign show that most Iraqi voters…
Even after its successful elections, Iraq remains a divided society. Democracy did not create these divisions, but it could be the key to managing them.
