From Dexter Filkins, in today’s New York Times:

With the Shiites on the brink of capturing power here for the first time, their political leaders say they have decided to put a secular face on the new Iraqi government they plan to form, relegating Islam to a supporting role.

The senior leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of mostly Shiite groups that is poised to capture the most votes in the election next Sunday, have agreed that the Iraqi whom they nominate to be the country’s next prime minister would be a lay person, not an Islamic cleric.

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The Shiite leaders say there is a similar but less formal agreement that clerics will also be excluded from running the government ministries.

“There will be no turbans in the government,” said Adnan Ali, a senior leader of the Dawa Party, one of the largest Shiite parties. “Everyone agrees on that.”

The decision appears to formalize the growing dominance of secular leaders among the Shiite political leadership, and it also reflects an inclination by the country’s powerful religious hierarchy to stay out of the day-to-day governing of the country. Among the Shiite coalition’s 228 candidates for the national assembly, fewer than a half dozen are clerics, according to the group’s leaders.

The decision to exclude clerics from the government appears to mean that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric who is the chief of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the scion of a prominent religious family and an oft-mentioned candidate for prime minister, would be relegated to the background. The five Shiites most likely to be picked as prime minister are well-known secular figures.

Shiite leaders say their decision to move away from an Islamist government was largely shaped by the presumption that the Iraqi people would reject such a model. But they concede that it also reflects certain political realities – American officials, who wield vast influence here, would be troubled by an overtly Islamist government. So would the Kurds, who Iraqi and American officials worry might be tempted to break with the Iraqi state.

The emerging policies appear to be a rejection of an Iranian-style theocracy. Iran has given both moral and material support to the country’s two largest Shiite parties, Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The conviction that the Iranian model should be avoided in Iraq is apparently shared by the Iranians themselves. One Iraqi Shiite leader, who recently traveled to Tehran, the Iranian capital, said he was warned by the Iranians themselves against putting clerics in the government.

“They said it caused too many problems,” the Iraqi said.

You don’t say.

Anyway, given the decidedly negative tenor of most Times‘s stories concerning George and Rummy’s Excellent Iraq Adventure, I’m a bit surprised they led with this piece today.

Of course, only time will tell whether the Iraqis truly embrace the long-term goal of political pluralism.  But there is plenty in this story to give comfort to those who have long-believed Iraq is heading in the right direction, politically—this despite the perceived ferocity of the insurgency (which continues to receive the bulk of media attention).

Perhaps in anticipation of what may well turn out to be “suprisingly” successful Iraqi elections, the Times has decided to hedge its bets a bit….?