History Being Made
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The agreement between the two major Shiite factions of Iraq to form a common list for the forthcoming elections in Mesopotamia is, for those of us who are invested in the future of a democratic Iraq, an event to mark. If it comes off, it will put an end to what Professor Bernard Lewis terms the “Sunni Ascendancy” that has obtained in Iraq under the Ottomans, the British and, most recently, the Baathists. For the first time, Shiites, who represent at least 60% of the population, will enjoy the chance to control their own destiny.
The forging of this coalition affords Iraqi Shiites an excellent chance to demolish some of the myths that the predominantly Sunni Arab nationalist movement – and its western acolytes – have peddled about them over the years. The first is that a unified Shiite bloc would inevitably fall under the sway of the Islamist regime in Iran. There are a number of long-term cultural reasons and more short-term political reasons why this is unlikely to be so. Many Iraqi Shiites are descendants of relatively recent nomadic converts to that brand of Islam from the Arabian peninsula – in contrast to the more settled, non-tribal ethnic Persians. At some level, the coolness toward their large eastern neighbor is not unlike the kind of distance that kept most English and Irish Catholics from becoming close collaborators.
The divergences between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites are at least as worthy of the attention of ward-heelers as of anthropologists. For Iraqi Shiites are much likelier to turn to Tehran if the western powers once again skew the playing field of politics in that country. If the majority population enjoys a fair cut of the action, they will have less need of outside assistance to rectify that artificially engineered imbalance. In any case, the outcome of the internal Shiite bargaining process appears to indicate that Tehran aligned candidates have not managed to dominate the slate, notwithstanding the presence of supporters of the two Iranian -created opposition groups, al-Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Time will tell whether the less theocratic Islamists and the Iraqi National Congress are right in their gamble that Moqtada al-Sadr can thus be contained.
Above all, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the pre-eminent figure of Iraqi Shiism pictured herewith, is conscious of the problems – from an Islamist perspective – of ruling every aspect of a modern society by clerical fiat. It is no coincidence that the Iraqi Shiite list has been compiled without recourse to the mob violence that attended the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It has been accomplished, so far, with just the kind of restraint and give-and-take that was meant to be the hallmark of a new kind of polity in the region.
It may yet be that Iraq is another case that proves wrong the skeptics of the idea that Islam can coexist with freedom and democracy. And that, while America helped clear the way by ousting Saddam, the achievement in the end is that of the majority of Iraqis themselves. As President Bush often remarks, it took America itself a while to work its way through the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, and even then to an end of slavery. Iraqis are further along today than they were at the beginning of the week, which is an encouraging sign and one that bears watching to see if it holds up through next month’s elections and afterward into Iraq’s democratic future.