Quote:Iraqi Constitution May Curb Women's Rights

By EDWARD WONG
Published: July 20, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 19 - A working draft of Iraq's new constitution would cede a strong role to Islamic law and could sharply curb women's rights, particularly in personal matters like divorce and family inheritance.
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Adam Nadel/Polaris, for The New York Times

Women's groups demonstrated Tuesday in Baghdad against a constitutional draft intended to strengthen the role of religious law in Iraq.

Adam Nadel/Polaris, for The New York Times

A banner saying "Stop the violence against Iraqi women" was carried at a Baghdad rally over constitutional issues as they affect women's rights.

The document's writers are also debating whether to drop or phase out a measure enshrined in the interim constitution, co-written last year by the Americans, requiring that women make up at least a quarter of the parliament.

The draft of a chapter of the new constitution obtained by The New York Times on Tuesday guarantees equal rights for women as long as those rights do not "violate Shariah," or Koranic law.

The Americans and secular Iraqis banished such explicit references to religious law from the interim constitution adopted early last year.

The draft chapter, circulated discreetly in recent days, has ignited outrage among women's groups, which held a protest on Tuesday morning in downtown Baghdad at the square where a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down by American marines in April 2003.

One of the critical passages is in Article 14 of the chapter, a sweeping measure that would require court cases dealing with matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance to be judged according to the law practiced by the family's sect or religion.

Under that measure, Shiite women in Iraq, no matter what their age, generally could not marry without their families' permission. Under some interpretations of Shariah, men could attain a divorce simply by stating their intention three times in their wives' presence.

Article 14 would replace a body of Iraqi law that has for decades been considered one of the most progressive in the Middle East in protecting the rights of women, giving them the freedom to choose a husband and requiring divorce cases to be decided by a judge.

If adopted, the shift away from the more secular and egalitarian provisions of the interim constitution would be a major victory for Shiite clerics and religious politicians, who chafed at the Americans' insistence that Islam be designated in the interim constitution as just "a source" of legislation. Several writers of the new constitution say they intend, at the very least, to designate Islam as "a main source" of legislation.

By rough count, nearly 200 women and men showed up in the fiery heat to hand out fliers and wave white banners in a throng of traffic. "We want to be equal to everybody - we want human rights for everybody," read one slogan. The demonstration came hours before two Sunni Arabs involved in writing the constitution were fatally shot near a Baghdad restaurant, threatening to throw the drafting process into turmoil.

"We want a guarantee of women's rights in the new constitution," said Hannah Edwar, an organizer of the protest. "We're going to meet with the constitutional committee and make our thoughts known."

A dozen women, some sheathed in full-length black robes, showed up to denounce Ms. Edwar's protest. They said they were followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the fundamentalist Shiite cleric who has led two rebellions against the Americans.

American and Iraqi officials say that several draft chapters of the constitution are floating around Baghdad and that no final language has been agreed on. Changes can still be made before Aug. 15, the deadline for the National Assembly to approve a draft. Protests by women and relatively secular blocs on the constitutional committee, like the Kurds, may force Shiite members to tone down the religious language.

"Some of the points regarding women's rights in this chapter are still to be reviewed," said Mariam Arayess, a religious Shiite on the committee.

Ms. Arayess said she believed that the draft was the most recent working version, and that it had fairly generous provisions for equal rights. She is one of fewer than 10 women on the 71-member drafting committee.

The chapter has 27 articles, most of which have relatively liberal provisions aimed at ensuring various civil rights. The first says that "all Iraqis are equal before the law" and that "equal opportunities are guaranteed for all citizens according to the law." The final article forbids censorship of the press.

Quote:Iraqi Constitution May Curb Women's Rights

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Published: July 20, 2005

(Page 2 of 2)

References to Islam and Shariah appear in a few places. One clause says Iraqis will enjoy all rights stated in "international treaties and conventions as long as they do not contradict Islam." Such language is accepted by many Iraqis, including moderates, who say Islam is a vital foundation for the country.

But women's groups are incensed by Article 14, which would repeal a relatively liberal personal status law enacted in 1959 after the British-backed monarchy was overthrown by secular military officers. That law remained in effect through the decades of Mr. Hussein's rule.

The law used Shariah to adjudicate personal and family matters, but did it in as secular a manner as possible, pulling together the most liberal interpretations of Koranic law from the main Shiite and Sunni sects and stitching them together into one code.

Critics of the draft proposal say that in addition to restricting women's rights, it could also deepen the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites. The draft also does not make clear what would happen in cases where the husband is from one sect and the wife from another.

Religious Shiite politicians tried once before, in December 2003, to abolish the 1959 law. As is happening now, women's groups and secular female politicians took to the streets.

Faced with the mini-rebellion, L. Paul Bremer III, then the effective American proconsul of Iraq, rebuffed the move, to the anger and dismay of many religious Shiites.

"We don't want to use separate Sunni or Shiite laws," said Dohar Rouhi, president of the Association of Women Entrepreneurs. "We want a law that can be applied to everyone. We want justice for women."

A Westerner familiar with the writing of the constitution said that when he saw a draft of the civil rights section less than a week ago, it did not contain the sweeping language on personal status law. In that version, he said, most measures - even those citing Shariah - were not as severe as they could have been.

"Compared to what some of the conservative Shiites were pushing, the glass is half full," said the Westerner, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, because he did not want to appear to be interfering in a sovereign Iraqi process.

He said there was some cause for alarm, though, pointing to a proposal to phase out a measure in the interim constitution requiring that a quarter of parliamentary seats go to women.

Ms. Arayess, the Shiite drafter, said some of the writers were considering keeping the quota for the next two terms of the parliament before allowing it to lapse. After that, she said, women should be able to stand on their own.

Quote:Thorny Issues Remain on Draft of New Constitution for Iraq

By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: July 23, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 22 - With only about three weeks left before the parliamentary deadline for the draft of a new constitution, a senior Western diplomat in Baghdad said Friday that some of the most contentious issues still remain to be resolved, including regional autonomy, women's rights, electoral law and the control of revenues from natural resources.

The disclosures came on the third day of a walkout by the Sunni Arab members of the constitution-writing committee, who halted their participation after two Sunni colleagues were assassinated, throwing the constitutional process into doubt. The comments by the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Western officials are trying to remain in the background, seemed to counter recent comments by some Shiite committee members that the draft was almost complete.

The American authorities have insisted that the National Assembly meet its Aug. 15 deadline to approve the draft to win public confidence, both in Iraq and the United States, in Iraq's fledgling democratic process.

The Americans are counting on clear momentum in the constitutional process to help undermine an unceasing insurgency, which on Friday continued its bloody campaign to topple the Iraqi government with scattered violence.

In the most deadly incident, three brothers, two of them policemen and the third a Sunni cleric, were kidnapped in northern Baghdad around midnight on Thursday, tortured and shot dead with a machine gun, according to an official at the Interior Ministry. Their bodies were found Friday, the official reported.

Gunmen attacked police patrols in Baghdad in three incidents, killing five and wounding four, the official said. Other gunmen killed two members of an Interior Ministry antiterrorism task force in the capital.

An American marine was killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb while conducting combat operations near Zaidon, the American military command reported Friday.

Among their demands, the Sunni Arabs on the 71-member constitution committee have called for government-funded bodyguards and security, as well as an international investigation into the killings of their two colleagues, who were shot on Tuesday in central Baghdad.

But the diplomat also said that in spite of its staunch public demands, the Sunni contingent has privately expressed its intention to return to the negotiating table.

"They definitely want to come back in," he said.

The Sunnis' temporary withdrawal from the process has worried the Bush administration, which views their inclusion in the political process as the decisive factor in deflating the Sunni-led insurgency. Additionally, many Sunni Arabs boycotted elections in January, and the Bush administration's fear is that should Sunni Arabs not help finish the constitution-writing process, their sense of alienation from the new Iraqi government could deepen, with catastrophic results.

Arguably the most contentious remaining issue is regional autonomy. The Western diplomat said that while the Shiites and Sunni Arabs have agreed that the Kurds should keep their autonomous powers, a debate remains over whether and how the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan should be redrawn. At the same time, the Sunni Arabs appear adamant that no other part of Iraq, namely the Shiite-controlled south, should be able to declare autonomy.

The Sunnis are concerned that with Kurdish autonomy in place in the north and Shiites agitating for an autonomous region in the oil-rich south, they will be left with an impoverished region barren of any natural resources.

A prominent Sunni Arab cleric on Friday criticized proposals to transform Iraq into a federal state, saying such a "division of the country" would be a betrayal of the population. "The voices that call for federalism are not those of loyal people," the cleric, Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidie, said Friday at the prominent Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, Agence France-Presse reported. "The patriots are against dividing the country, and I call on them to fight for maintaining a united Iraq."

The Western diplomat said the disputed issue of women's rights was still on the table, though he said that in the most recent draft he had seen, the drafters had removed a section - Article 14 - that would require court cases dealing with matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance to be judged according to the law practiced by the family's sect or religion. Among other constraints dictated by that measure, Shiite women in Iraq generally could not marry without their families' permission.

Committee members also still have to decide whether national elections are going to be based on a system of provincial representation, as the Sunni Arabs prefer, or a nationwide system, which would favor the majority Shiites and the Kurds.

Finally, the diplomat said, the committee has been wrestling over the sharing of revenues from natural resources, namely oil, and whether revenue will be controlled by local or federal authorities or both. The Kurds believe that in the near future they will be able to gain control of the northern city of Kirkuk, which has oil fields, while Shiites in the south are sitting on the country's largest oil resources. The Sunnis, who dominate the desert region in the western part of the country, are trying to ensure that they will have what they regard as a fair share of the oil profits.

Quote:Islam is the dominating influence in every Arab country, and the only governments that have been able to curb its influence up to now are those of dictators like Musharraf in Egypt and Bouteflika in Algeria. Most of those dictators are pan-Arabists (or were at least issued from that milieu) as was Saddam Hussein, which coincides with the fact that the Iraqi Sunnis, Hussein's main support base, form the main opposition to Islamic law as mentioned in the first article. What's interesting in Iraq is that there are three ethnic groups, two of which are to a certain degree secularized, which gives hope that these two groups - the Sunnis and the Kurds - might form a power bloc to prevent the constitution from becoming overly Islamicized. In a society used to democracy this is probably what would happen, but the Sunnis are involved in a big way with the insurgency and most of them have refused to even take part in the political debate. This is the US's big problem right now: trying to get the Sunnis to put down their weapons and realize that their interests coincide with the US's, without alienating the Shi'ite majority that, while supportive of US presence (well no one is supportive of the US, but basically they support the "New Iraq"), is strongly Islamist. The only group that supports the Ammies all the way are the Kurds. Those guys are pretty awesome, but mainly because they're sick of getting shot at by everybody and would really like to have their own country.

Quote:Forcing the Iraqis to change the constitution is a really, really bad idea that would lead to the alienation of the Shi'ites and change a difficult but winnable battle into a bloodbath of epic proportions (see: Vietnam). Just sayin. Go with the flow for now.

Quote:And finally, what is with the comment " I just don't know if this administration cares enough to try...". Are you blaming this on Bush?

Quote:Now don't misunderstand, I'm not pro-Islam in the slightest. I hate Islam. But the world isn't changed overnight. Before you rage against the leaders, you need to have some understanding of what life is like for them. I think they biggest thing is to give them a democracy, place some key ideas in their minds, and give the keys to the people. Let them make the push for equal rights, just like what happened here. Then it will be a decision Iraq made, not a decision the US made.

Great Rumbler Wrote:It took the United States over a hundred and fifty years to give equal rights to women, hopefully it won't take Iraq that long.

Quote:Not all Islamic countries are quite as bad as you suggest -- some, like Qatar and Kuwait, have made progress, and of course Turkey is a good example of what a Muslim country could be (a somewhat-repressive-but-improving example, of course (to mention their supression of the Kurds), but on the political front a good example)... and Iraqi law now is fairly liberal. Iran too, on the women's rights front (that is to distinguish it from other things where Iranian law is horrific, such as the death penalty (not just using it, but using it on adults and juveniles alike often for crimes that would never earn such a punishment anywhere in the first world), supression of dissidents, etc), though with this new president who's a lackey of the Ayatollah who knows what will happen...

Quote:It has taken Islam more then a thousand years to achieve nothing in this department, Kill Islam and you free the women restore human degnity.If you think about Iran it went the reverse, was the highest in humanity during the Sassinid Persian empire under "Zoroastrainism" were women could serve even as priests and were equal with men, As their god is asexual non gender and the "masculin and Feminin" began with the angels "amesha Spenta" cause they were somewhat gnoistic with the duality concept all things have a opposite force, Were there is male there is female ect..

Apparently "plato" studied amongst the Zoroastrain shcolars in greek ruled persepolis.Thats were the western "platonism" comes from which then created the "gnoistic" xtian cults and even the mandeist jewish "john the baptist cult",Today we now know Gnosis Platonism as "The Matrix" with Keanu Reeves. Whats cool with those gnoistic xtians they thought Jesus was a "neo" dude that if they followed his intruction and trainning could become a "neo Jesus" gain imortal life.

Long story short unlike clearly all Gnoistic and modern things, be it Zoroastrain, xtian gnoistic, jewish Gnoistic the essence "mandeism" cult , Atheists, liberals.Muhhamud is a chauvinist prick like the old testament writers, "saint paul or apostle paul" times 10x! Blaims women for man sinning agiast god, Who made the Kabbah go black? It was mentrating women LOL! Serious thats in the fucking Koran! So women are the source and weakness of man bringing him to sin in the ideas and philosophies of Islam which contridict themselves and are hate filled bull shit.

Quote:What you fail to mention that for instance "Turkey" has a high conscentration of Orthodox christians and non Muslims in it, Turkey once was the heart land of Orthodox christianity constantinople and the byzantine empire ,Turkey is in close prioximity to europe so that adds many liberal and secular cultural exchanges.

Quote:Lebanon has a high amount of "Orthodox christians" as well.

Wahhabist make up a 3rd of Qatar , pretty much all those radical fundiementalist terrorist groups are wahhabist its well known Osama is one,Wahhabist believe that it is Allah plan and destiny for them to conquere the entire world and establish a world empire of Islam instituting strict rigid "Sharia law". Qatar has been offset because of its relationship with Britain and the fact the majority population are all immigrants from all over.

Quote:Iran even right now is no role model of human rights, As they execute the most people besides china that they admit officially that is, Alot of those death row are women who get stoned to death untill their brains burst out.

Quote:Under the new constitution, Islam would become the official religion of the Iraqi state, and be regarded as "a main source of legislation." Clerics would more than likely sit on the Supreme Court, and judges would have broad latitude to strike down legislation that conflicted with the religion. Clerics would be given a broad, new role in adjudicating family disputes like marriage, divorce and inheritance. Under most interpretations of Islamic law, women enjoy substantially fewer rights than men.

The heavily Islamic cast of the constitution, influenced by the Shiite religious parties who won the January elections, has troubled many of Iraq's women and secular leaders, even with the constitution's many guarantees for religious freedom and individual rights. Mr. Hassani, the Assembly speaker and one of the few Sunnis to come out in favor of the constitution, said Sunday that he was quite unhappy with parts of it.

"This constitution has too much religion in it," Mr. Hassani said. "The rights of women; they took away a lot of the rights of women."

Even some Shiites and Kurds, for all their relief that the constitution was finally complete, expressed uneasiness about the way it was achieved.

"What is important for me is something that would make Iraqis feel more united," said Mahmood Othman, a Kurdish member of the constitutional panel. "That didn't happen."

Quote:I think true honnest "freedom of religion" is what is gonna be needed to be pressured on heavily, having other faiths come in would break up the Orthodox militant Islamic monopoly so hopefully they could be like Lebanon and Turkey.