c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The e-mail from a Southern Baptist chaplain to friends and supporters was as blunt as it was urgent: “Freedom will not ring throughout this country (Iraq) if the voting process fails.”

The chaplain, Capt. Lyle Schackelford, is assigned to U.S. troops delivering voting machines for the historic Iraqi election that will take place on Sunday (Jan. 30) in at least parts of violence-wracked and American-occupied Iraq.

“Your prayer support and God’s intervention are needed to safeguard our soldiers and give democracy a chance in the war-torn country,” Baptist Press quoted the chaplain as writing.

The election has become a pivotal moment, both for President Bush and his Iraqi policy, and for the insurgents who have vowed to disrupt the election, undermine its legitimacy and wage “fierce war” against the “evil faith” of democracy and “the arrogant American tyrant who carries the flag of the cross.”

As the war, from its beginning, has been marked by intense religious rhetoric, so, too, has the debate about _ and the violence sparked by _ the election, mirroring the intense religious and ethnic rivalries that make up the fabric of Iraqi life.

Sunday’s balloting (11 p.m. Saturday to 9 a.m. Sunday EST) will elect a 275-seat national assembly, which in turn will appoint a transitional government and, more importantly, write a permanent constitution that will be put to a referendum in October. A second vote, under the new constitution, will elect a new government before Dec. 31, 2005.

A key issue in the writing of the new constitution will be the role of Islam in the political structure of the country, as well as what role and how much control _ in other words, autonomy _ ethnic and minority groups such as Kurds and Christians will have over their own affairs.

For Sunday’s election, some 100 registered political parties are fielding about 7,500 candidates.

The major political blocs in Iraq fall out along religious and ethnic lines. The United Iraqi List, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution and endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is the major Shiite political bloc and is expected to get a majority of the vote among Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq’s population.

But the fear among Sunnis in and out of Iraq _ including in Washington _ that the Shiite domination could lead to an Iranian-style theocracy has led leaders of the Shiite parties in recent days to assure that their government will be secular.

“There will be no turbans in the government,” said Adnam Ali, a leader of the Dawa party, one of the Shiite parties in the United Iraqi Alliance.

A second major Shiite group led by the young cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose militia’s fought U.S. forces twice last year, has stopped just short of calling for a boycott and has refused to support al-Sistani’s backing for the elections that will put Shiites in power for the first time in more than half a century. Sadr has said the elections lack legitimacy because they are being held under American guns and without large-scale Sunni participation.

Sunni Muslims, who make up about 20 percent of the population, provided most of the leadership for Saddam Hussein’s ostensibly secular government and they have shown scant interest in joining a process that will ratify their expulsion from power. Additionally, the balloting process, based on a single national district rather than regional precincts, undercuts potential Sunni strength.

“The Sunni people will not recognize the legitimacy to this election, and they will not follow its decisions or laws,” Mohsen Abdel Hamid, chairman of the Iraqi Islamic Party, told the Los Angeles Times over the weekend.

In addition, the intimidating insurgency is based in Sunni areas and one of its most violent leaders, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Sunni militant, has labeled Shiite Muslims “heretics” and argued the election is a U.S. plot to impose the “insidious beliefs” of Shiism on the country. “Even now, the signs of infidelity and polytheism are on the rise,” he said in a recent tape recording.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Some observers expect the Sunni turnout to be as low as 5 percent in some areas _ and turnout will be a key factor for judging the election’s success.

The big winners in Sunday’s balloting are likely to be the Kurds, an ethnic group descended from ancient Indo-European tribes and who live in parts of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. They are mostly Sunni Muslims and make up about one-fifth of the population.

The Kurds were brutally supressed under Saddam but have gained a great deal of autonomy and protection under the American “no fly” zone imposed on Iraq in the early 1990s.

It is widely expected they will gather the second-highest number of seats in the new parliament _ 65 to 70 of the 275 _ and be a key power broker in determining the make-up of the new government.

Christians make up between 2 percent and 3 percent of Iraq’s population of 26 million, mostly Assyrian Christians who are Chaldean Catholics. While they were generally free to worship under Saddam, they have begun leaving the country in large numbers as they face mounting persecution and harassment. Two Christian groups, the Assyrian Democratic Movement and the Chaldean National Council, have formed an electoral alliance.

A number of secular parties, including Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqi List, with 233 candidates, and smaller parties such as the Iraqi Independent Democrats and the communist People’s Union are also participating.

There will certainly be many prayers, as Schackelford asked, accompanying the election. And with or without divine intervention, for President Bush, the voting on Sunday will be a major _ but not ultimate _ test of his Iraq policy. For Iraqis, it may begin to shape the nature, including the religious nature, of a future Iraq.

MO/KRE/JL END RNS