A stern-faced Saddam Hussein in a Western suit and hat was the defining image of the dictator's final years in power. Today, an old, white-bearded cleric in a black turban and robe is the face of Iraq.
The phenomenal contrast of those two images speaks volumes about the transformation of this nation since Saddam's ouster 21 months ago. The brutal, secular dictator is gone. Now religion has taken center stage in Iraqi politics, and a landmark election in less than two weeks has brought the country's powerful Shiite clergy to the forefront.
That has meant a volatile mixture of religion and politics and widened the religious and ethnic faultlines in this culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse nation of nearly 26 million — most of them Shiites.
"Religion has entered the Iraqi political system and there will be nothing less than a very bloody war if someone tries to take it out," said Diaa Rashwan, a prominent expert on Islamic issues from Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
During 35 bloody years under Saddam's Baath Party, most Iraqis, particularly Shiites, yearned to express their religious identity. The unfettered freedoms that followed Saddam's removal allowed them to do so.
That set in motion an Islamic revival that, in the case of the Shiites, brought laymen and clergy together in an alliance that would be nearly impossible to reverse.
After decades of oppression by the once-dominant Arab Sunni minority, Iraq's Shiites are embracing the Jan. 30 vote that's expected to hand them power. At the same time, Sunni Arabs fear the election will spell the end of their domination.
These conflicting interests have deepened the gap between the two rival communities as an intensifying Sunni insurgency raises fears of a Shiite-Sunni civil war.
Furthermore, by directly involving themselves in politics, Iraq's religious Shiite leaders, with the aging Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani at the forefront, have gone beyond their spiritual mandate. That in turn has given rise to fears among some Iraqis that the country could be headed either toward Iranian-style clerical rule or — at a minimum — to a system where the clergy are a permanent fixture in politics.
Such fears are fed by the fact that al-Sistani has tacitly lent his support to a ticket that includes two of the largest Islamic-oriented parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, and Dawa.
These concerns also are shared by some Arab regimes in a region where most people follow the mainstream rival Sunni sect of Islam.
Shiism has traditionally been associated in the Arab world with Iran, a Shiite nation viewed with suspicion and distrust by many Arab regimes. It fought Iraq for eight years in the 1980s. The thousands of posters bearing the image of al-Sistani and other clerics stir memories of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which overthrew the shah and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Both SCIRI and Dawa maintain close links with Iran, where they had found refuge and support during more than two decades in exile. Top leaders of both parties have repeatedly promised not to impose Iranian-style clerical rule if they win control of the 275-member National Assembly.
Al-Sistani himself was born in Iran but has spent more than 50 years in Iraq. His Iranian origins are often cited by critics who maintain he should stay out of Iraqi politics. Some Shiites point out that the co-founder of the Baath Party, the late Michel Aflaq, was Syrian.
Al-Sistani, however, has enjoyed wide support among Iraq's Shiites since his rise to prominence in the 1990s. By the time of Saddam's ouster in 2003, he was the country's top cleric. His incessant calls for elections and his open challenges to the United States over its political plans for Iraq further raised his standing.
Now, his tacit blessing for an electoral alliance contesting the January vote may be enough to bring victory in the ballot. Tens of thousands of election posters promoting the alliance bear his image, while hundreds of banners bear his words to get out the vote.
Some Shiite preachers say that voting for the United Iraqi Alliance that al-Sistani has endorsed is a religious obligation. Politicians from the alliance, which includes some Sunni Arabs, have repeatedly sought to distance the ayatollah from such statements.
"The interference by religious leaders in this way entails grave dangers that will impact on political life in Iraq and push it to extremism," said Baghdad University political scientist Nabil Salem, who believes politicians and clerics are using each other for their own purposes.
"The clerics are trying to use politicians from their sect to influence events and the politicians are using the power of the clerics on the streets to try and harvest votes."
Al-Sistani is not the only senior Shiite figure involved in the campaign.
Portraits of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taqi al-Modaresi, the most senior cleric in the holy city of Karbala, adorn hundreds of election banners and posters put up by a rival Shiite alliance. Posters by another ticket led by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, bear a picture of Hussein al-Sadr, a senior Shiite figure from Baghdad.
Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric whose supporters staged two uprisings against U.S. troops last year, is another religious Shiite figure with a substantial political presence in Iraq. He is openly seeking to establish an Islamic regime in Iraq.
Sunni clerics are playing a big role too. The Association of Muslim Scholars, which rose after Saddam's ouster to speak for the Sunni clerical establishment, is urging an election boycott.