c. 2006 Religion News Service
BAGHDAD _ The changes have come slowly.
For nearly three years, Iraqi women have inched toward greater freedom. In some cases, it has meant breaking from traditional dress. In others, there have been leaps that once would have been unthinkable: driving, taking a job outside the home, or even entering marriage counseling.
However, these same women face new limitations later this month when the Iraqi constitution is enacted. Under the charter approved in a nationwide referendum last October, Islam will predominantly govern Iraqi law and religious sects will decide issues involving marriage and inheritance. Currently, those issues are resolved in civil courts.
While some women welcome the introduction of Islamic law, others fear it will lead to restrictions on their personal freedom and civil rights similar to the theocracy that rules in neighboring Iran.
What’s undeniable is this: As the United States continues the work of liberating Iraq from the regime of Saddam Hussein, women’s rights here are in jeopardy.
“Muslim women are going to suffer if the civil courts are completely abolished,” said Annam Al-Soltany, a lawyer and a member of the Progressive Women’s League, an Iraqi group lobbying for constitutional reforms benefiting women. “The civil law offers women more protection, but Iraq is a very religious society, and many people, including women, want Islamic laws and Islamic courts.”
While it’s impossible to know how opinion splits on the issue, it is not difficult to find women who want strict Islamic law and are willing to speak out about it.
“Islamic law will give women far more protection than the civil law,” said Boushra Hassan, a 31-year-old who founded Batool Cultural House for Women in the Kadhimiya section of Baghdad. “Mankind created the civil laws, but God created mankind and the Islamic laws, so it stands to reason that the Islamic laws are superior.”
Boushra said she and her staff of seven aim to assist women of all ethnicities and religions in coping with family, spiritual and cultural obligations by offering free classes in computer literacy, child rearing, marriage counseling and Quran studies. The center, which also offers child care, operates with donations from wealthy and generous Iraqis at home and abroad.
While most women at the center say they are devout Muslims and followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the revered Shiite cleric with close ties to Iran, they also want the new Iraqi government to include some democratic reforms rather than simply adopt stringent Islamic society like their eastern neighbor.
For many of these women, the greatest obstacle to personal freedom derives from family pressures.
“I would love to go back to work again, but my husband wants me to stay at home,” said Mahmoud Lazem, a 33-year-old former computer programmer with four children who stays at home now, but comes to the center weekly.
At the Iraq Women’s Union in the nearby Mansour neighborhood, women draped in black abayas, the traditional billowing garment, and hajibs, or headscarves, operate sewing machines to earn extra money for their families, while others learn to read and write.
Najat Ahmed, 36, one of the women overseeing the union, said she embraces Islamic law, but hopes for more freedoms in Iraq’s fledgling democracy.
“Women are precious, like pearls, and God wants to protect us, so he commands we cover ourselves in the abaya like a shell around the pearl,” Ahmed says. “But women must have the freedom to choose how they want to dress according to their own beliefs _ no government should dictate how they dress.”
Mauren Dowed, a 28-year-old Assyrian Christian who runs a supermarket in central Baghdad and wears Western-style clothes, says it is difficult for her to walk along the streets of the Iraqi capital without hearing disparaging remarks from men. “They think I have the morals of a prostitute because I don’t wear the abaya or hajib,” Dowed said.
She said she is less concerned about possible restrictions on dress and more anxious about legislation limiting women in the workforce. “Wearing a piece of fabric is not difficult, but it would be hard if I couldn’t work in public,” Dowed said.
Al-Soltany, the lawyer with the Progressive Women’s League, argues that a verse in the Quran clearly states women are inferior to men, and that alone will make it nearly impossible for women to receive fair treatment before a Muslim judge in an Islamic court.
Sondus Kudhum, 35, who owns a stationery shop in the Jadiriyah neighborhood, said she will never submit to an Islamic court.
Kudhum, who has never married _ a rarity here _ keeps a 5 mm pistol in her store, an 8.5 mm pistol in her 1991 Honda Civic and an AK-47 assault rifle in her room at her parent’s house.
“The biggest (problem for) women here now is security,” Kudhum said as she displayed one of her pistols. “I’ll leave the country if they form an Islamic government, but that’s not going to happen as long as the U.S. is here.”
U.S. officials have conveyed mixed signals about the role of the 15 million women in Iraqi society. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad spoke out strongly against any attempts to diminish women’s rights as the constitution was forged last year, but some human rights organizations accused him of compromising the future of Iraqi women when he pressured the transitional national assembly to agree on a draft to meet U.S.-imposed deadlines, though it contained provisions for Islamic law.
Still, Iraqi women have made advances in government, and will hold at least 25 percent of the country’s new parliamentary seats, in accordance with the new constitution.
Women played an integral role in Iraqi society during Saddam’s rule, at least up until the 1990s, when the Iraqi dictator adopted a hard-line Islamic stance to strengthen his grip on power following the 1991 Gulf War.
“We’re liberated Muslims now, and women’s rights will not be affected,” says Adel Al-Jaberi, who advised the constitutional committee drafting the charter and is closely linked to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. “If they’re Muslims, they’ll have more rights than under the civil laws.”
For Iraqi women like Boushra, who runs the women’s center in Kadhimiya, Islamic law is a form of insurance for their well-being while they strive to juggle family duties, religious devotion and cultural traditions.
“Fortunately, my husband understands my need to leave the home and run the center,” Boushra said. “I love my work here.”
MO/RB END PALMER
(James Palmer writes for The Star Ledger in Newark, N.J.)
Editors: To obtain a photo of Sondus Kudhum, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
Editors: Many of the interviews in this story were conducted through a translator
