Friday prayers and the future elections.

I have noticed lately that many announcements are being posted on the walls in Sunni mosques encouraging people to participate in the coming elections-that are planned to be in January 2006-and to not miss the chance like last time.

I think the Sunni trend had made up its mind about this subject after the latest dispute inside the "association of Muslim scholars" after which it became obvious the decreasing influence of Al-Dhari's trend (who's out of the country right now along with his son) and the increasing influence of the moderate trend that favors being part of the political process.

I have pointed this out earlier and I expect the near future to bring up the results of this development in the form of less violence in the usual hot spots.
It's also become clear that the association has taken a firm decision not to take active part in the political process and had joined the "committee of national reconciliation" as a supervisor only and there's a frank invitation for the association to limit its role to religious advisory and preaching (as it should be).

For the fourth week in a line, the "department of Sunni property" which is an official entity that takes care of Sunni mosques and Sunni heritage has been distributing inquiry forms to the people who attend the Friday prayers as such prayers are usually attended by more people than other week days.
The inquiry (or poll) includes four questions:

1-would you like to have a role in drafting the constitution?
2-would you like to participate in the next round of elections?
3-would you prefer to see a unified committee for the Sunni?
4-Are you with the call for joining the Iraqi army and police?
*You can submit any suggestions you have.

The results I could take a look at in Baghdad were as follows:
In "Ghaffar Al-Thunoob" mosque in A'adhamiyah, 273 people filled the forms and 96% of them answered the 4 questions with "yes".

In "Al-Yakeen" mosque in Al-Sha'ab quarter I wasn't able to get the exact number of the people who took the poll but the percentage of those who answered the 4 questions with "yes" was 92%.

In "Haj Ahmed Ra'oof" mosque in Al-Baladiyat quarter south east of Baghdad, 95% of those who took the poll answered all the questions with "yes".

No doubt these results suggest that a high percentage of the Sunni people will most likely vote in the coming elections especially considering that these answers come from committed Sunni Muslims who regularly attend mosques.

The 2006 election will obviously witness a very hot competition and we're going to see a lot of action, i.e. the more players, the better the game will be while those who put their bucks on the failure of the change in Iraq would better forget about their winning.

Mohammed.