Iraqi women split on role of Islam in new constitution

BAGHDAD - Iraqi women are split over how great a role Islam should play in the new constitution, currently being drafted in parliament.

An early draft of the constitution published in the local Al-Sabah newspaper on Tuesday made clear that Islam is to be “the official religion of the State” and “the main source of legislation.”

The text is supported by the conservative Shiite majority in Iraq’s parliament.

“No law that contradicts the universally agreed tenets of Islam may be enacted,” reads the draft, still under discussion by a parliamentary committee and subject to revision.

Parliamentary speaker Hajim Al-Hasani made clear he did not believe this meant the rule of Sharia, or Islamic law.

“I think there’s an agreement (in parliament) that we should not include Sharia in the constitution,” he told AFP.

There are different interpretations of Sharia law, Hasani said, so “why open that door?”

‘Back to the Dark Ages’

But for women’s rights activist Yannar Mohammed any reference to Islam in the constitution “will take us back to the Dark Ages.”

Mohammed fears that any such language could allow public floggings and stoning of adulterers, and granting clerics the last word in matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance.

“The liberation of Iraq has unleashed the darkest forces in the country,” said Mohammed. “We will be losing the basic protections as women and public citizens” if this language is adopted.

Samira Al-Moussawi, a petroleum engineer and one of the 87 women elected to Iraq’s 275-member parliament, says such fears are ”overblown”.

“There is nothing to be afraid of. No ideas will be imposed by law,” said Moussawi, a member of the Shiite parliamentary majority.

Moussawi said that since most Iraqis are Muslim it is natural to refer to Islam in the constitution.

MPs from all political groups “will discuss these subjects then we can reach a standard we can agree upon on,” she said.

“Nobody should be scared because there will be no items that have not been reached by agreement.”

Iraq’s current parliament was elected in January under guidelines written during the US Coalition Provisional Authority that mandates a minimum 25 percent female representation in the assembly.

Currently, nine women MPs work on the 71-member committee drafting the constitution.

Being a woman MP in Iraq is a dangerous job: in late April Lamiya Abed Khaduri, from former prime minister Iyad Allawi’s party, was shot dead on her doorstep.

And in May Salama al-Khafaji, an independent MP elected on the Shiite alliance ticket, survived a fourth attempt on her life in two years.

‘Asking for less rights’

The head of the women’s caucus in Kurdistan’s regional parliament, Pakhshan Zagana, is currently in Baghdad as part of a delegation lobbying constitution writers.

“We must work hard to convince society that women are entitled to their own opinions,” said Zagana, who wants a mandatory 40 percent female representation in all ministries as well as national, regional and local elected bodies.

Zagana, a Muslim, respects Islamic law but believes it limits personal freedoms. “It is very sad when I see women asking for less rights,” she said.

The increase in killings, rapes and abductions since the March 2003 US-led invasion “have restricted women’s freedom of movement and their ability to go to school or to work,” according to a February report on women in Iraq by Amnesty International.

The report decried “a backlash from conservative social and political forces” that “threatens to stifle their attempts to gain new freedoms.”

The backlash includes zealots monitoring women’s attire and even attacks with acid on women deemed to be under-dressed, said a Baghdad-based Western diplomat who follows women’s issues.

The diplomat said the real question will be whether the constitution provides safeguards to “protect people who chose to be different”.

Another Western official cautioned that the text of the constitution changes almost daily, and that many of the most extreme proposals are put out as part of a negotiating strategy.

AFP 

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