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Discussions on Article 7 of Kurdistan
constitution ongoing
4.10.2006 |
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Kurdistan Region
(Iraq), October 4 , --The Union believes that since
an estimated 95% of the population of Kurdistan is
Muslim, Islam should be the main source of lawmaking
in writing the constitution.
Kurdistan Region is an area of significant
difference than the rest of Iraq. Despite the ethnic
diversity that exists in the region, the Kurds,
Arabs, Turkomans, and Cheldo-Assyrians are living
together peacefully.
Based on the principles of this multi-ethnicity and
multi-religious existence, the Kurdistan Parliament
has now drafted its legitimate constitution
subsuming 160 articles. It is worth mentioning that
for the purpose of bettering and further enriching
it, the constitution had to undergo modification and
amendments twenty times in a one-year time span.
The legal committee of drafting the constitution
consisted of 19 members.
Following the final approval of the constitution by
Region President Massoud Barzani, the document was
distributed over all civil organizations, party and
non-party-affiliated factions as well as the media
outlets. This circulation of the constitution
started discussions among all who received it,
especially discussions on its Article 7.
"We were with the idea that Islam and the Islamic
Sharia (Law) the main sources of legislation and
drafting the constitution," says Member of Kurdish
Parliament and executive member of the Islamic Union
of Kurdistan, Zana Rostayi.
The Union believes that since an estimated 95% of
the population of Kurdistan is Muslim, Islam should
be the main source of lawmaking in writing the
constitution.
"We were also with the idea that the role of Islam
in the constitution of Kurdistan be no less that its
role in the constitution of the federal Iraq,"
Rostayi adds, "we will do all we can hoping to
ensure that in Kurdistan, Islam is the source of
legislation as it is the case in the Iraqi
constitution."
Article 7 of the document states that the
constitution will give emphasis to the Muslim
identity of the majority of the people of Kurdistan,
outlining Islam and the Islamic law as one of the
sources of legislation in Kurdistan.
Within a wider spectrum, the constitution also
guarantees the full rights of Christianity, Yezidism,
along with all other religions and faiths in the
mentioned article.
"Out of the committee's 19 members responsible for
drafting the constitution, only two members agreed
on having Islam as the source of legislation. The
other seventeen agreed otherwise - that Islam should
be a source, of legislation in Kurdistan," says
Sherwan Haydari, president of the legal committee in
Kurdistan Parliament.
Initially believing that Article 7 in the
constitution of Kurdistan was identical to its
corresponding article in the constitution of the
federal Iraq, the executive member of the Islamic
Union of Kurdistan says there do exist significant
differences between the two.
Haydari, however, says, "Since Islam was not going
to be the only source of legislation, we thought it
would be lawful and constitutional to rewrite the
draft."
The Islamic Union of Kurdistan is a participating
party in the Kurdistan Parliament. Prior to the
finalization of constitution draft, the party had
held subsequent meetings with the president of the
region as well as the legal committee to have Islam
mentioned in the document.
"We were hoping that this article would be exactly
verbatim and identical to that in the Iraqi
constitution, but now that this is not the case, we
still deem Article 7 a reasonable one," Hiwa Saed
Ali of the Islamic Union of Kurdistan politburo
says. "However, it should have been specified in the
preamble of the article that Islam is the official
religion of Kurdistan Region."
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