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Iraq likely to enshrine Islam as main
source of law
31.7.2005
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CAIRO, Egypt (AP)
- The framers of Iraq's constitution appear likely
to enshrine Islam as the main basis of law in the
country -- a stronger role than the United States
had hoped for and one some Iraqis fear will mean a
more fundamentalist regime.
Arab constitutions vary widely over the role of
Islamic law, ranging from Lebanon, where the word
''Islam'' never appears, to Saudi Arabia, which says
the Quran itself is its constitution.
Culture weighs far more heavily than the
constitution and law, particularly when it comes to
women. In Gulf nations -- where the constitutions
spell out a slightly lesser role for Islamic law, or
Sharia, than in Egypt -- women are more segregated
and wear more conservative veils covering the entire
face.
Kuwait, for example, bans alcohol and only gave
women the right to vote this year, in contrast to
Egypt, where beer, wine and liquor are sold openly
and women have been voting since the early 20th
century.
Yet most Gulf nations' constitutions state that
Sharia is ''a main source'' of legislation, while
Egypt takes the more definitive phrasing of ''the
source'' -- a fine distinction taking on major
importance in Iraq.
Former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat amended the
constitution during the 1970s, changing the language
from ''a source'' to ''the source'' to beef up his
Islamic credentials rather than to start
implementing Sharia.
But in Iraq, some fear the Shiite Muslim leaders who
want similar wording in Iraq's constitution hope to
lay the groundwork for a more fundamentalist rule,
at least in Shiite-dominated areas.
Already, Shiite leaders in some southern cities have
tried imposing Islamic-based rules, pressuring women
to wear headscarves and forcing liquor stores and
music shops to close.
A draft of the constitution published last week in
the government Al-Sabah newspaper put Islam as ''the
main basis'' of law. But the constitutional
committee -- made up of Shiites, Kurds and some
Sunnis -- is still haggling over the language.
Fouad Massoum, the Kurdish deputy head of the
committee, said it will discuss the role of Islam in
meetings Sunday.
''We, in the Kurdish coalition, want Islam to be one
of the sources of legislation,'' he said.
Iraq's most prominent Shiite Muslim cleric,
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has said he wants to preserve
a strong role for Islam in the document, but also
shuns the direct rule by clerics seen in his country
of birth, mainly Shiite Iran.
Mouafak al-Rubaie, a national security adviser and a
Shiite, met al-Sistani on Saturday and said the main
concern of the Shiite religious leadership is to
''preserve the Islamic identity of Iraq and its
people, which means preserving a united Iraq and
people as a state.''
When U.S. administrators ran Iraq, they insisted on
language setting Islam as ''a source'' of
legislation when an interim constitution was
approved in March 2004. But the same Shiites who
backed ''the main source'' last year now dominate,
and American officials have less influence over a
sovereign Iraqi government.
Six Arab nations do not mention Sharia at all in
their constitutions: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia,
Libya, Lebanon and Jordan.
Lebanon, where the Christian population is large and
the president is a Christian, is the sole Arab state
not to set Islam as the national religion -- in
fact, the constitution does not use the words
''Islam'' or ''Christianity'' at all, a reflection
of its 1975-1990 civil war between sectarian
militias.
Tunisia has taken one of the most liberal tracks in
the Arab world, abolishing polygamy in 1956 and
banning the headscarf in schools and other public
establishments. Authorities regularly urge women to
avoid the hijab, though more women have been donning
scarves in past years.
The one area where Islamic law is nearly universal
is in personal status law -- rules concerning
marriage, divorce and inheritance. Sharia allows men
to divorce their wives by proclamation and grants
daughters half the inheritance that sons receive.
In Syria and Libya, the constitutions are more
concerned with laying out their nationalist
ideologies -- Libya's socialism and Syria's
pan-Arabism -- than with Islam.
At the opposite extreme lie Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Iran's constitution lays out its Islamic Republic
headed by a supreme leader, supposed to be the
country's most knowledgeable Muslim cleric.
Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's most sacred shrines,
states in the first article of its Basic Law that
the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad's traditions are
the nation's constitution, later saying, ''Saudi
society will be based on the principle of adherence
to God's command.''
AP
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