The United States, which has said the vote must go forward, has repeatedly sought to portray recent attacks that have killed dozens of people as the acts of a reeling insurgency, not the work of a force that is gathering strength.
The radical Ansar al-Sunnah Army and two other insurgent groups issued a statement yesterday warning that democracy was un-Islamic.
Democracy could lead to passing un-Islamic laws, such as permitting homosexual marriage, if the majority of people agreed to it, the statement said.
''Democracy is a Greek word meaning the rule of the people, which means that the people do what they see fit," the statement said. ''This concept is considered apostasy and defies the belief in one God -- Muslims' doctrine."
Ansar al-Sunnah earlier posted a manifesto on its website saying democracy amounts to idolizing human beings. Yesterday's joint statement reiterated the threat that ''anyone who accepts to take part in this dirty farce will not be safe."
Insurgents have intensified their strikes against the security forces of Iraq's US-installed interim government as part of a continuing campaign to disrupt the elections for a constitutional assembly.
The statements by the Sunni, Arab-dominated, insurgent groups seemed aimed at countering Shi'ite leaders' contentions that voting in the election is every Muslim's duty. Shi'ites, who make up 60 percent of the population, hope to use the vote to seize power from minority Sunnis, who were favored under Saddam Hussein. Iraqis will elect a national assembly that is to write a new constitution.
The Al-Jazeera satellite channel reported that all 700 workers for the electoral commission in Mosul resigned yesterday because they had been threatened and that Iraq's leading Sunni political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, had withdrawn from the race. If true, the move will severely hamper efforts to prepare for the vote in Mosul, which has been too dangerous for most work to begin though the vote is a month away.
Farid Ayar, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, could not confirm the Al-Jazeera report.
