"Bush Allies Raise Concerns Over Role of Islam, Women's Rights" http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/0,,SB112708403938544377-QqzC0KkqPQpdgRM2wVLum1Lymso_20060919,00.html
Iraqi Charter Causes Alarm Bush Allies Raise Concerns Over Role of Islam, Women's Rights By YOCHI J. DREAZEN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL September 19, 2005; Page A15 WASHINGTON -- President Bush repeatedly has likened Iraq's constitutional controversy to the one that raged when the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to debate what would become the U.S. Constitution. But for some of Mr. Bush's political allies, it is the differences between the two documents that matter, not the similarities. As the Bush administration's Iraq strategy enters a crucial period that is meant to culminate in two elections and set the stage for a military withdrawal, the White House's public-relations push is being complicated by the surprising anger the constitution is sparking among Republicans and others normally supportive of President Bush. The critics have expressed alarm about the provisions concerning women's rights, the role of Islam in Iraqi daily life and the deference accorded to Shiite clerics with close religious and cultural ties to neighboring Iran. [Iraqi charter causes alarm] The Bush administration now has few options for changing the document. The constitution was drafted with heavy American involvement -- including a failed effort to win changes that would make the charter more amenable to Iraq's Sunnis. During intensive talks over the document in August, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad held regular meetings with the leaders of Iraq's feuding sectarian parties to offer U.S.-crafted compromise language, and embassy staffers set up a temporary base inside the headquarters of one of the parties to help track and translate the various drafts. President Bush even took the unusual step of telephoning a top Shiite leader to ask for concessions to win Sunni support for the charter, but the Shiite cleric, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, said no. That means the White House faces the growing possibility of seeing domestic support for the Iraq venture evaporate as Americans conclude that the constitution enshrines religious strictures inimical to U.S. ideals and strident ethnic separatism with the potential to break the country apart through civil war. Compounding the administration's difficulties, those criticisms are being voiced by the segments of the country long most supportive of the Iraq war. In a recent post on National Review Online's group Web log, editor Jonah Goldberg stressed the importance of women's rights in a democratic Iraq and said that "for the U.S. to countenance something else would be a breach of faith with enormous political consequences as well." In a letter late last month to President Bush, meanwhile, Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, joined by Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher of California, expressed "deep concern" that the draft constitution "holds the potential for codifying discrimination against women as well as limiting fundamental human rights for all Iraqis in a manner that may threaten the growth of democracy and freedom in Iraq." The lawmakers said they are especially concerned by provisions mandating that "no laws may contradict the fixed principles of Islam" and creating a supreme court composed of experts in Islamic law that will have the power to strike laws down as unconstitutional. The political unease is growing in the weeks before an Oct. 15 referendum on the document, which can be vetoed by two-thirds votes in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces. Iraq's Shiite leadership formally ended all constitutional negotiations with the Sunnis last week when they finalized the document's text and sent it to the United Nations to be printed. Sunnis responded by ramping up their voter-registration efforts aimed at ensuring the document's defeat in the October vote. For now, the Bush administration is hoping to gradually win over critics in the U.S. by citing the charter's formal enshrinement of democratic principles and individual freedoms like the right to free speech and to worship according to the religion of each citizen's choosing. Administration officials and most of their allies say that by many measures the constitution is an unusually liberal charter for the Arab world that could serve as a model for other countries in the region. At a joint appearance with visiting Iraqi President Jalal Talabani last week, for instance, Mr. Bush hailed the document as a "historic milestone" that will protect individual freedoms and preserve the unity of the diverse nation. But critics and supporters of Iraq's new constitution acknowledge that the actual provisions of the document are likely to prove less important in the long-term than the ways future Iraqi governments and judiciaries choose to interpret and enforce them. Many Arab countries such as Syria and Egypt have constitutions that offer, on paper, fairly expansive political and individual freedoms. In practice, however, Arab governments routinely declare decades-long states of emergency that allow for the abrogation of those protections and refuse to build judiciaries willing or able to enforce them. Many constitutional experts and a fair number of Republicans say they are concerned about the draft document, which envisions a loose confederation of federal regions overseen by a weak central government, whose powers are largely limited to foreign policy and fiscal issues. What's more, both Shiites and Kurds will maintain their own large, well-armed militias. Many critics say the constitution could result in a theocracy or effectively divide Iraq into competing quasi-independent states. Nathan Brown, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has followed Iraq's constitutional deliberations, said Iraq increasingly resembles Lebanon shortly before the country descended into a decades-long civil war. Mr. Brown said Iraq's political debates are now being fought along expressly sectarian lines, a trend likely to be exacerbated by a constitution that gives legal sanction to the expansive rights already enjoyed by Iraq's Kurdish minority while removing any roadblocks to the creation of a similar autonomous region in the oil-rich Shiite heartland in southern Iraq. "This does seem to really enshrine separatism, since if you take away the Kurdish north and eight or nine provinces in the Shiite south, there's not much of Iraq left," he said. "The question becomes whether the country can be dissolved peacefully, and other than in the north, it's hard to be optimistic about that." ISLAMIC PRISM In the U.S., criticism of Iraq's proposed constitution is growing, as some Americans are expressing alarm about provisions concerning women's rights and the role of Islam in daily life. But in Baghdad (above), conservative Muslim women last month demanded that Islam be included in the draft charter. Points of Contention PROVISION Article 2: No law can contradict "fixed principles" of Islam. Article 36: Freedom of assembly, speech and the press. Article 39: Allows families to choose religious law for marriage, divorce and inheritance. Article 90: Constitutional court with experts in secular and Islamic law. AMERICANS' CONCERN No clear balance with religious freedom or women's rights. Rights depend on not violating "public order and morality." Religiously devout men could force women to make that choice. Could see legislation struck down for not following stringent Islamic precepts. Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back! http://us.click.yahoo.com/VpgUKB/pzNLAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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