Women, Islam, and the New Iraq

[Violet_Crumble]

Isobel Coleman
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2006

Article 14 of Iraq's new constitution, approved in a nationwide referendum held on October 15, states that Iraqis are equal before the law "without discrimination because of sex." Yet the constitution also states that no law can be passed that contradicts the "established rulings" of Islam. For this reason, the new document has been condemned by critics both inside and outside Iraq as a fundamental setback for a majority of Iraq's population -- namely, its women. According to Isam al-Khafaji, an Iraqi scholar, the document "could easily deprive women of their rights." Yanar Muhammad, a leading secular activist and the head of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, worries that the Islamic provision will turn the country "into an Afghanistan under the Taliban, where oppression and discrimination of women is institutionalized."

These criticisms are not without merit, and the ambiguity of the new constitution is a cause for concern. The centrality of Islamic law in the document, however, does not necessarily mean trouble for Iraqi women. In fact, sharia is open to a wide range of understanding, and across the Islamic world today, progressive Muslims are seeking to reinterpret its rules to accommodate a modern role for women.

Iraq's constitution does not specify who will decide which version of Islam will prevail in the country's new legal system. But the battle has already begun. Victory by the progressives would have positive implications for all aspects of the future of Iraq, since women's rights are critical to democratic consolidation in transitional and war-torn societies. Allowing a full social, political, and economic role for women in Iraq would help ensure its transition to a stable democracy. Success for women in Iraq would also reverberate throughout the broader Muslim world. In every country where sharia is enforced, women's rights have become a divisive issue, and the balance struck between tradition and equality in Iraq will influence these other debates.

In many Islamic countries, reformers have largely abandoned attempts to replace sharia with secular law, a route that has proved mostly futile. Instead, they are trying to promote women's rights within an Islamic framework. This approach seems more likely to succeed, since it fights theology with theology -- a natural strategy in countries with conservative populations and where religious authority is hard to challenge. Now that the United States has helped midwife an Islamic state in Iraq, U.S. officials would, for similar reasons, be wise to move beyond their largely secular interlocutors. If Washington still hopes to create a relatively liberal regime in Iraq, it must start working with progressive religious Muslims to advance the role of women through religious channels.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060101faessay85104/isobel-coleman/women-islam-andthe-new-iraq.html

[IndianaGreen]

1. Women are still being oppressed in Afghanistan as well

The burqa rules despite the "American liberation"! Meanwhile in Iraq, women have lost rights and personal security from the moment the US attacked that country, as have non-Muslims.

One could argue that American soldiers have been the point of the sword in spreading fundamentalist Islam! Bin Laden should be kissing Bush on his cheeks!

[Violet_Crumble]

2. US foreign policy is the best friend of fundamentalists...

Now that the Bush administration doesn't have the need to play the 'we must liberate those poor oppressed women' card in Afghanistan, despite the US govt knowing full well of the treatment of women under the Taliban, it's back to looking the other way. And the saddest thing about women in Iraq is that the US administration knew before the invasion that there was a very high likelihood that women would lose most of their rights in post-war Iraq, but they didn't care...

What the US govt doesn't want to understand is that reform must happen slowly, it must be carried out by the populations of the countries needing it without foreign intervention, and that if reform can happen by progressive Muslims using the Qu'ran to successfully argue their case, then the US should embrace that instead of putting obstacles in the path of progressives...

Violet...

[Orangeone]

3. You can't liberate

women by killing their menfolk.