He served under the Fatimids as a judge over the Sunni population.
It later expanded to include new middle-class housing, which brought with it a large Sunni population also.
First, humiliating the Sunni population will set back efforts to establish a rapport with citizens and bring about civil reforms.
In the long term, however, the risk will decrease as conditions improve and the insurgent leadership has less with which to incite the Sunni population.
The January election can begin to address this problem only if large portions of the Sunni population accept its results.
Lebanon's re-emergent sectarian structure allows for little cultural, economic, or political discrimination against the Sunni population.
Still more significant, the initial returns included no votes from the areas west and north of Baghdad, where the Sunni population is concentrated.
And in the center you've got a Sunni population that is nervous about being trapped in a system in which it would be overrun.
In religious administrative terms, a mufti is roughly equivalent to a deacon to a Sunni population.
But he said he still could not count on most of the area's Sunni population.