Last week I characterized the legislative ambition of the United Iraqi Alliance as unrepresentative of its base, especially the Shiite religious community that rejects theocratic doctrines of Wilayat al-Faqih. One clergyman is particularly disappointed — none other than Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who, while unduly critical of federalism, has no patience for the sectarianism of which Iraqis are regularly (and unfairly) accused:
The Sunnis are your family. Stay by their side this time so that they stay by your side in the coming times. Consider them as your brothers and sons and do not bear any grudges within you because of the injustice of the past, as both of you were victims.
Three brothers, three victims; three pioneers. Where Sunnis are politically recalcitrant, Shiites and Kurds are eagerly modernist. While Shiites work to rid themselves of Iranian-backed, Islamist street gangs, Sunnis and Kurds have impressed secularism into the constitution. Kurds and Sunnis differ on a patriot's colors — the north's gilt sun on red, white and green to the midland's red, white and black — but Sunnis and Shiites are one, responsible for making mercifully brief the old Governing Council's promotion of an Iraqi flag bearing the Islamic crescent. If Iraqi culture is cantilevered, as derogators and sympathists alike suggest, we should keep some faith in the strength of the single vertical support that has kept Iraqis aloft this long, for we share it as all men: a desire to be free and at peace.