With elections scheduled for May, political parties in Iraq are busy forming alliances and gearing up for the campaign. Of note, slogans promoting political Islam are remarkably scarce. For this election cycle, all the political parties, including Islamists parties, have chosen to focus on civic life in their effort to get voters' attention and gain their confidence.

Out of more than 200 Islamist parties registered with the Independent Electoral Commission, only some 10 have names explicitly invoking Islam, such as the Islamic Dawa Party, the Islamic Virtue Party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi Organization of Islamic Action and the Kurdistan Islamic Group.

This development evinces the clear overall decline in Islamic movements in Iraq, both Shiite and Sunni, compared with previous elections, in which Islamist parties accounted for more than half of the registered groups. Also noteworthy is that many Islamist parties are competing this time under non-religious names and slogans and emphasizing secular themes. The most popular themes are calls for reform and promoting the civil state.

Indicative of this trend, parliament Speaker Saleem al-Jubouri, leader of the Islamic Party, the Iraqi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has decided to form an alliance with Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi as the Civil Assembly for Reform, while the Sadrist movement intends to run as the Alliance of Revolutionaries for Reform, allied with the Iraqi Communist Party.