Islam likely to drive law in Iraq

CAIRO, Egypt – 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 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.

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 today. “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.

When U.S. administrators ran Iraq, they insisted on language setting Islam as “a source” of legislation when an interim constitution was approved. But the same Shiites who backed “the main source” last year now dominate.

Six Arab nations’ constitutions do not mention Sharia at all: 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.

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.

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.