FAST Shipping.... No Rx Required
Determined to regain some of their clout, leading Sunni clerics who once
called elections under occupation a farce and condemned voting as an act
against Islam, are using the same mosque pulpits to urge followers to register.
Sheik Mohammed Salih, cleric at Baghdad's Bilal al Habashi Mosque and once a
staunch critic of elections, Friday called upon "every honest and honorable
Iraqi citizen to go to these centers and register" and then to "participate in
the elections and referendum with enthusiasm."
The Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's leading Sunni political party, this time
is pushing an aggressive get-out-the-vote campaign, blanketing its newspaper
and broadcast outlets with information about registration, lobbying tribal
leaders, and passing out registration pamphlets door to door.
Party officials are even pressing for permission to set up a registration booth
in the Abu Ghraib prison, where they are betting that the votes of thousands of
detainees - mostly young Sunni men - would go in their favor.
"We are making a great effort to push people to register," said Alaa Makki, a
senior party official.
But the push is also drawing violent resistance.
In Mosul, eight carloads of gunmen kidnapped three Iraqi Islamic Party members
Friday as they were putting up voter-registration posters. After driving to a
public square, the gunmen cursed the party officials as "infidels" and
"defectors of Islam" before shooting all three to death in front of horrified
bystanders, witnesses said.
A day earlier in Ramadi, the governor of Al Anbar province and other Sunni
leaders came under fire by unidentified attackers as they entered a mosque for
a meeting about the upcoming election. Four were injured.
In Samarra, Sunni neighborhoods have received dueling fliers from groups
claiming to represent insurgents - some threatening to attack anyone
registering to vote and others condemning the election but vowing not to harm
civilians who participate.
The Muslim Scholars Assn., a group of conservative clerics, refuses to endorse
a vote as long as U.S. troops are in Iraq.
-- Binary/unsupported file stripped by Ecartis --
-- Type: image/jpeg
-- File: Klick1.JPG
|