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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

demanding democracy from reluctant occupiers but really they were making

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

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

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

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

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

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.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050919/pollitt

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