BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: According to some observers, the capture of Saddam Hussein may intensify calls from Iraq's majority Shia community for a speedier transfer of power. This week, more attacks on Shiite leaders, presumably by Sunni Muslims concerned about their future in a government likely to be dominated by Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the Iraqi population. But what kind of government do the Shiites want? Islamic law? Secular and democratic? Something in between? We have a special report from Kate Seelye of National Public Radio.

KATE SEELYE: Of all Iraq's religious and ethnic communities, the Shia have good reason to celebrate the capture of former president Saddam Hussein. For decades the dictator brutally oppressed the Shia, who rose up against him after the 1991 Gulf War.

News of Saddam's capture can only give the community an added boost. The Shia have been enjoying a political and religious revival since the leader's overthrow last spring. This revival is already evident in Najaf, the holy city at the heart of the Shia world. Seminaries closed under the former regime are reopening and clerics are returning from exile. Rituals, forced underground for years, are once again celebrated publicly.

Najaf is home to Iraq's Shia religious leadership. Here in this shrine, the father of the Shia sect -- Imam Ali -- is buried. The son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, Ali's followers broke from Islam's Sunni majority in the 7th century, after a dispute over succession. Najaf is considered so sacred that for centuries, the Shia have brought their dead here to be blessed and buried

Free to worship as they please, Iraq's Shia are now also free to voice their political opinions. These are diverse and often fractious.

These new freedoms are not without risk. The shrine of Imam Ali has been the site of several bloody assassinations.

Shortly after the fall of Saddam, two religious leaders were stabbed to death here in an internal Shia dispute. The shrine still bears the scars of the massive October car bombing that killed esteemed senior cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al Hakim. The violence and instability have tempered jubilation here.

ADEL HUSSEIN (Najaf Resident, Through Translator): We believe in dialogue and peaceful coexistence with others, and this threatens those who support Saddam.

SEELYE: Analysts say there is no proof of Sunni involvement in the car bombing. But having governed for centuries, Iraq's Sunnis are threatened by the prospect of Shia rule. At 15 million, the Shia make up 60 percent of the population. They will likely dominate the political future.

ABDEL MEHDI (Spokesman, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq): The Shia in Iraq is a majority. So they have to play principal role in the whole direction of the country. I don't mean they will impose their Shia beliefs on the country, but as any other country, the majority should be there.

SEELYE: But what direction that majority will take remains to be seen. While many closely follow the rulings of their religious leaders, others, like this Baghdad security guard, are secular.

HOSSEIN AL HOSSEINI (Baghdad Security Guard, Through Translator): Religion is a personal thing. It should be separate from politics. I don't want anyone telling me what to do.

SEELYE: Hosseini says he favors a democratic government. One recent poll indicated that 90 percent of Shia share the same view. At the same time, another poll found that two thirds of Shia also want religion to play a large role in politics.

Here at the Iraqi Governing Council, members are grappling with these issues

ahead of the establishment of a transitional Iraqi assembly next summer. The influential Iran-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is one of the parties involved in the debate. Its leaders say that because Iraq is a majority Muslim country, their goal is a state that bases its morality on Islamic principles.

Mr. MEHDI: Well, our agenda is to put forward a democratic state, this is the word; respecting Islam, a state that Islam is its official religion.

SEELYE: But others want a much closer relationship between mosque and state.

From his mosque in Kufa, cleric Moktada Sadr has called for the establishment of a religious state, bound by Islamic Sharia law. He has also been a vocal critic of the American occupation. Son of a revered deceased ayatollah, Sadr is viewed as a rabble-rouser by Najaf's religious establishment. But his message resonates with the disenfranchised in places like Sadr City, a slum suburb of Baghdad, where his party provides social services.