BAGHDAD, Iraq - (KRT) - At the Baratha mosque in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Utifiyah, the preacher's voice rose as he punctuated his Friday sermon with passionate exhortations to Shiites to vote "yes" in Saturday's referendum on Iraq's new constitution.
"Tomorrow we will open the doors of freedom with our own hand! We have an appointment with the terrorists and extremists!" proclaimed Jalaludin Sagheer, a prominent Shiite cleric and legislator, to which his congregation responded with shouts of "Yes, yes to the constitution!"
Half a mile away, on the opposite bank of the Tigris river, a different message rang out across the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya. There, thousands of worshipers spilled out onto the streets after Friday prayers at the Abu Hanifa mosque chanting, "No, no to the constitution. No, no to occupation," in an equally passionate display of determination to defeat the document in the referendum.
Nine months after Iraqis braved bullets and bombs to cast ballots in their first democratic election, they are preparing to head to the polls again Saturday. And on the eve of this latest milestone on Iraq's journey to a still uncertain future, the country once again is deeply divided, between the Shiites and Kurds who support the constitution and Sunni Arabs who reject it.
