Iraqis defy terrorists to vote in elections
The Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission is reporting a 59% voter turnout, despite the threats of violence.
In a country where democracy has recently been introduced, such as Iraq, elections are much more than just a transition from one government to another. They represent the course of democratization and its manifestations in the country, based on the improvement or deterioration of the people and political entities' democratic conduct and practices. Based on the foregoing, the quantity and quality of participation and the preliminary declared results in this electoral round revealed a remarkable, positive development in the transition to a gradually stable democracy.
In these elections, just as in the previous ones, voices called for prohibiting the electoral process or not recognizing its results, but these voices did not find a significant echo and, on the contrary, calls for active participation to change the situation were made by almost all of the Iraqi components.
Sheikh Abdul-Malik al-Saadi, a senior Iraqi religious authority, issued a fatwa on April 28, deeming participation in the elections to be haram (religiously forbidden), for voters and candidates alike. He based his opinion on that previous elections did not produce any positive outcome for the Sunnis of Iraq. Saadi even accused those calling for participation in the elections of practicing political exploitation by using ignorance and deception. Groups from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) distributed leaflets in Sunni areas a week before the elections, stating “The voter and the elected are unbelievers departing from the Islamic religion, and the barrels of our rifles will be aimed at their heads."
Yet, the majority of Sunni religious authorities agreed on the necessity to participate in the elections, stressing that the failure to participate would be unlawful, given the more significant harmful effects of this failure. These authorities included Sheikh Abdul Karim Zaidan, the former comptroller general of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq, Sheikh Ahmad al-Kabisi, a prominent senior cleric in Iraq, and others.
