The dominant Al Sistani power group list will not lead to radical fundamentalism as in Iran, despite both have in common democratic elections. For centuries the Shi’ites have been a minority splinter group in the Muslim world, ironically because the Sunnis were more adaptable to historical trends, willing to bend to limited modernity, though painfully slow, provided it did not seriously conflict with Islamic law. However, Sunni has its own radical fundamentalists such as Zarqawi and bin Laden who actually think more in line with Shi’a ,owing to the secular excesses of Saudi Arabia’s royal families, and the despotism for material aggrandizement of the Baathists, yet never unleashed terrorism against Saddam for the brutality upon the Shi’ites.

Just as the Grand Ayatollahs of Iran cannot contain the younger generations exposed to western thinking and vulnerable to its excesses, Al Sistani recognizes, perhaps reluctantly, Iraq’s history of moderate modernity, not to mention the autonomous Kurds and the American influence, he cannot impose strict Islamic law and knows without the inclusion of the Sunnis, particularly its educated class in the main still refugees in Syria and Jordan. Ironically and audaciously George Bush has awakened the giant of subliminal modernity, if not democracy, inherently in the subconscious of the predominantly Sunni, if not the Shi’ia, of the Middle East.

Copyright © 2005 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: February 15, 2005.

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