Last month the big challenge was to encourage Sunni Arabs to vote in Iraq’s elections. Now the challenge is to convince the Sunnis that the results reflect not systematic fraud but the fact that Sunni Arabs make up only a minority.

Convincing them has been no easy task. This page has emphasised the need for Iraq’s majority Shiites and their Kurdish allies to be more inclusive in dealing with the Sunni Arab minority. But the other side of the coin is that the Sunnis need to accept that in democracies majorities rule. The new political power of Shiites and Kurds is proving very hard for many of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs to accept.

But until they can, it will be hard for them to find their legitimate place in a new democratic order.

Sunni Arabs have every right to insist that Shiite militias not be allowed to terrorise Sunnis, that Shiite-run police ministries not torture Sunni prisoners and that the Sunni middle class not be excluded from the army. They are right to demand that oil revenues be fairly shared by all provinces. But the Sunnis have no legitimate claim to hold on to the special privileges lavished on them by past undemocratic regimes. And they surely have no right to invoke their loss of political dominance as an excuse for violence against government institutions and Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis.