[Peace-discuss] Women in Iraq

[Morton K. Brussel]

FYI, from The Nation. Afghanistan may be worse. Do we want "the west  
" to tip in these fundamentalist directions?
--mkb

subject to debate by Katha Pollitt

Theocracy Lite

[from the September 19, 2005 issue]

So now we know what "noble cause" Cindy Sheehan's son died for in  
Iraq: Sharia. It's a good thing W stands for women, or I'd be  
worried. The new Constitution, drafted under heavy pressure from the  
Administration, sets aside the secular personal law under which  
Iraqis have lived for nearly half a century in favor of theocracy  
lite. "Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic  
source of legislation," Article 2 begins--the spin is that this  
language is a victory because Islam is not the source. "(a) No law  
can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam." On the  
other hand, "(b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles  
of democracy" and "(c) No law can be passed that contradicts the  
rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution"--as in, for  
example, Article 14: "Iraqis are equal before the law without  
discrimination because of sex," religion, ethnicity and so on.

There's enough right here to keep a conclave of political theorists  
busy for years. Equal before which law? How can women be equal before  
Islamic law, according to which they are unequal? How can a non- 
Muslim be equal in a Muslim state? Who decides which Islamic rules  
are undisputed and which are, well, disputable? As with our own  
multiple versions of Christianity, doesn't that depend on which imam  
is holding the Koran? And what happens when (a) (Islam) conflicts  
with (b) (democracy) or either (a) or (b)--or both--conflict with (c)  
(human rights)? Don't laugh, it could happen. Fortunately, the  
Constitution has come up with just the thing to settle those knotty  
questions--a Supreme Federal Court "made up of a number of judges and  
experts in Sharia (Islamic Law) and law." As prowar pundits are quick  
to remind us, it's a lot like our own Constitution--except for the  
official religion part, and that's not for lack of effort by Justice  
Scalia.

Bush has professed himself delighted with the document. "This  
Constitution is one that honors women's rights and freedom of  
religion," he announced in Arizona, where he was taking a vacation  
from his vacation. The freedom-of-religion bit alludes to a slightly  
bewildering provision that seems to hold out the possibility of  
separate courts for each religion. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head  
of Iran's ultra-Shiite Guardian Council, isn't too worried by this  
ecumenical gesture: "Fortunately, after years of effort and  
expectations in Iraq, an Islamic state has come to power and the  
Constitution has been established on the basis of Islamic precepts."

We don't yet know what any of this means concretely, but if Iraq  
turns out to resemble Iran--and boosting Iran's regional influence  
was another thing Casey Sheehan died for--women have a lot to look  
forward to: being married off at the age of 9, being a co-wife,  
having unequal rights to divorce and child custody, inheriting half  
as much as their brothers, having their testimony in court counted as  
half that of men, winning a rape conviction only if the crime was  
witnessed by four male Muslims, being imprisoned and flogged for  
premarital sex, being executed for adultery, needing mandatory  
permission from husband or father to work, study or travel. Bush  
supporters who find any of this disturbing--hello? Independent  
Women's Forum?--can console themselves with the thought that, as  
former CIA official Reuel Marc Gerecht said on Meet the Press,  
"women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of  
democracy." Another plus: Ayatollah al-Sistani is antichoice.  
According to his website, sistani.org, even a rape victim can have an  
abortion only if her relatives would murder her for getting pregnant.  
So Iraqi fetuses are all set.

Is this what all those purple fingers were about? They looked like a  
nation demanding democracy from reluctant occupiers but really they  
were making an ethnic and religious power grab? In 2004 Iraqi women's  
groups, quietly backed by then-US occupation chief Paul Bremer,  
forced the Governing Council to rescind Resolution 137, which would  
have replaced secular family law with Sharia. That was reassuring to  
those who wanted to believe that the US government was on some sort  
of Wilsonian human-rights mission. This time around we're supposed to  
take comfort in the promise of secular courts for those who prefer  
them, in the banning of honor killings and in the Constitution's  
transitional 25 percent set-aside for women in Parliament, even as  
Sunni and Shiite theocratic gangs assault and murder unveiled  
educated and professional women who venture out alone.

"We have lost all the gains we made over the last thirty years," said  
Safia Taleb al-Souhail, last seen sitting in the balcony with Laura  
at the State of the Union address, smiling and waving her purple  
finger. "It's a big disappointment." Even blunter words come from Dr.  
Raja Kuzai, an obstetrician and secular Shiite who served in the  
assembly's Constitution-writing committee and, as the President tells  
it, greeted him as "My Liberator" when she visited the Oval Office in  
2003: "I think it is over now," she writes in the San Antonio Express- 
News. "I want the American people to know that our dreams are gone,  
our work was in vain. There will be no future for our children and  
our grandchildren in the new Iraq. The future is for the clerics.  
They will lead the country.... This is not the democracy we dreamed  
of. This is the dictatorship of the majority!" Dr. Kuzai has  
announced that she is leaving Iraq.

It always seemed a little strange to me that Bush was carrying the  
standard of secularism and pluralism and women's rights in the Muslim  
world when he is so keen against all three here at home. In the  
liberal hawks' fantasy war, Bush was the love child of Mary  
Wollstonecraft and Voltaire, striding forth to battle the combined  
forces of Osama bin Laden and Jacques Derrida. Sometimes I thought  
that to Bush, as an evangelical Christian, even the Enlightenment was  
better than Islam, the rival faith. But given the way things are  
turning out, it's clear that Bush's world is big enough for two kinds  
of religious mania: America gets creationism, Iraqis get Sharia.  
Fundamentalists get both countries, and women get the shaft.


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