For some Shiites, the elections will rectify perceived mistakes made at the country's founding. In 1920, the Shiite clergy led a revolt against the British occupation that followed World War I. Once it was put down, the clergy kept up their opposition, rejecting participation by Shiites in elections that followed and discouraging a Shiite role in the government and its institutions, which soon became dominated by Sunnis, particularly the urban elite that was fostered by Iraq's imperial rulers for centuries.
This time, many of the mainstream Shiite clergy are voicing a hostile message toward the Sunni-led insurgency. The calls have sharpened amid mounting bloodshed that, last week, targeted a Shiite community center in Baghdad.
Sayyid Hashem Awadi, a Shiite cleric, heads the Ghadir Foundation in Baghdad that produces pro-election pamphlets.
(Anthony Shadid -- The Washington Post)
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"They are not serving the interests of the people and the interests of the country," Haideri said in his sermon. He went on to call the insurgents terrorists and sarcastically referred to them as "brother mujaheddin," a sacred term for Islamic fighters.
At that, the worshipers broke into a chant, under the shadow of minarets topped with green domes.
"God is greatest!" they shouted three times. "Victory to Islam! Death to Saddam!"
Role of War
Shiite empowerment is just one facet of the clerical campaign, and it is usually couched in coded language. More common are visceral appeals to an electorate that has grown fatigued and disillusioned with the carnage of war.
Banners fluttered recently in the brisk breeze of Baghdad's winter on the road to the twin domes of the Kadhimiya shrine, which was bustling with pilgrims and vendors selling honeyed sweets and tapes of Shiite laments. At one end of the road, banners promised a new era of stability with the vote. At the other, they cast the election as the surest way to end an occupation that has grown increasingly unpopular.
"Brother Iraqis, the future of Iraq is in your hands. Elections are the ideal way to expel the occupier from Iraq," one white banner proclaimed. "Brother Iraqi, your vote in the elections is better than a bullet in battle," an adjacent sign read.
Along an iron fence that borders the shrine were appeals cast in nationalist and religious terms.
"Not voting is a reward for terrorism," one read. "If you don't consider it a religious duty, then your national duty calls on you to vote," another intoned. More bluntly, one read: "Voting honors the blood of martyrs."
At times, the slogans insist on blind loyalty to Sistani. "Everyone is with you," a banner in the sacred city of Najaf proclaimed.
"The clergy are advocating elections 100 percent," said Sami Shamousi, the prayer leader of a Shiite community center in downtown Baghdad. "It has become a religious responsibility for us to encourage participation in the elections."
At his worship hall, he has distributed about 200 leaflets printed by the Ghadir Foundation, a community organization that is based in the sprawling slum of Sadr City and is loosely supervised by Sistani and other senior ayatollahs. Stacks of posters with Sistani's portrait were piled in dimly lit rooms, darkened by an electrical outage. On shelves were bundles of leaflets and pamphlets that present questions and answers about the vote: "What are we electing?" and "What does proportional representation mean?"
In a second-floor office sat Sayyid Hashem Awadi, 38, a gaunt cleric in black turban and gray gown who directs the foundation's staff of 30. For 65 days, he said he had been too busy to return to his home in Najaf.
"This stage is too critical," he said. "We're afraid of failure."
On his desk was an Arabic-language pamphlet on civil society, a phrase that usually describes a vibrant give-and-take between citizens and their government. The pamphlet, printed by his foundation and emblazoned with a map of Iraq, notes the term was imported from the West. But it adds, "In reality, the crises sweeping our societies force us to seek help though other people's experiences."
Awadi, whose speech shifts effortlessly from Western thought to Islamic principle, nodded his head in agreement.
Iraq, he said, was long a militarized society, where in Hussein's days "you either obeyed orders or you are killed." Awadi's vision was a society in which opinions were respected and disputes were "not a reason for killing each other." The way to create that society was through the elections in January, he said, a process in which people's opinions would be respected.
"It's a matter of the people's choice," he said. "What do the people want?"
"Our job and our task is to explain these things," the young cleric went on, raising his voice over the cascading sound of the traffic jam that poured through his window. "There are many questions in the minds of the people."
