DAR AL ISLAM - IRAQ: "THEY'RE USING THE NEW CONSTITUTION TO IMPOSE ISLAMIC LAW & REDUCE WOMEN'S RIGHTS"

Extremists force women to hide under head scarves
By James Palmer

BAGHDAD -- For two years, Faiza Abdal-Majeed has carried a head scarf in her purse for emergencies.

For a woman in the Iraqi capital four years after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, these emergencies can include passing unlawful checkpoints manned by armed militiamen, impromptu forays through neighborhoods controlled by religious zealots and taxi drivers who refuse her fare unless she covers her hair.

In addition, Mrs. Abdal-Majeed's job with Iraq's women's affairs ministry frequently brings her into contact with government officials, police officers and Muslim clergymen who insist that she cover up before they speak with her.

"Some clerics and politicians are forcing religion into our lives," said Mrs. Abdal-Majeed, 45. "We're being pushed back 1,000 years in time."

Baghdad once was considered a secular, cosmopolitan metropolis where Islamic customs seldom collided with women's fashion. Today, however, religious ideology has strengthened its grip and forced half the population to submit to traditional Islamic dress.

On the streets of the capital, the most common couture is what women call the Islamic uniform: the bulging black abaya that covers the body from head to toe; the head scarf, or hajib; and the long, dark ankle-length skirts commonly seen on schoolgirls, university students and professionals.

The changes have left a generation of women, especially those more educated and better off financially, struggling to meet expectations.

"I'm always discussing with my friends and family whether or not to wear the veil," said 21-year-old activist Zaineb Hussein. "I can't go out without it, but I take it off once I reach my office. I feel completely free without it."

Even though extreme Islamists have exerted influence over society for the past four years, many women say the country's two-year-old democratically elected parliament is even more responsible for the regression of civil liberties and fashion choices.

"The government differs on all issues except women's rights," said Yanar Mohammed, the president of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. "They're using the new constitution to impose Islamic law and reduce women's rights."

...


Iraq's new constitution:

Full Text of Iraqi Constitution
Draft Document, to Be Presented to Voters Saturday

THE PREAMBLE

In the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate
We have honored the sons of Adam.
We are the people of the land between two rivers, the homeland of the apostles and prophets, abode of the virtuous imams, pioneers of civilization, crafters of writing and cradle of numeration. Upon our land the first law made by man was passed, the most ancient just pact for homelands policy was inscribed, and upon our soil, companions of the Prophet and saints prayed, philosophers and scientists theorized and writers and poets excelled.

Acknowledging God's right over us, and in fulfillment of the call of our homeland and citizens, and in response to the call of our religious and national leaderships and the determination of our great (religious) authorities and of our leaders and reformers, and in the midst of an international support from our friends and those who love us, marched for the first time in our history toward the ballot boxes by the millions, men and women, young and old, on the thirtieth of January two thousand and five, invoking the pains of sectarian oppression sufferings inflicted by the autocratic clique and inspired by the tragedies of Iraq's martyrs, Shiite and Sunni, Arabs and Kurds and Turkmen and from all the other components of the people and recollecting the darkness of the ravage of the holy cities and the South in the Sha'abaniyya uprising and burnt by the flames of grief of the mass graves, the marshes, Al-Dujail and others and articulating the sufferings of racial oppression in the massacres of Halabcha, Barzan, Anfal and the Fayli Kurds and inspired by the ordeals of the Turkmen in Basheer and as is the case in the remaining areas of Iraq where the people of the west suffered from the assassinations of their leaders, symbols and elderly and from the displacement of their skilled individuals and from the drying out of their cultural and intellectual wells, so we sought hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder to create our new Iraq, the Iraq of the future free from sectarianism, racism, locality complex, discrimination and exclusion.

Accusations of being infidels, and terrorism did not stop us from marching forward to build a nation of law. Sectarianism and racism have not stopped us from marching together to strengthen our national unity, and to follow the path of peaceful transfer of power and adopt the course of the just distribution of resources and providing equal opportunity for all.
We the people of Iraq who have just risen from our stumble, and who are looking with confidence to the future through a republican, federal, democratic, pluralistic system, have resolved with the determination of our men, women, the elderly and youth, to respect the rules of law, to establish justice and equality to cast aside the politics of aggression, and to tend to the concerns of women and their rights, and to the elderly and their concerns, and to children and their affairs and to spread a culture of diversity and defusing terrorism.

We the people of Iraq of all components and shades have taken upon ourselves to decide freely and with our choice to unite our future and to take lessons from yesterday for tomorrow, to draft, through the values and ideals of the heavenly messages and the findings of science and man's civilization, this lasting constitution. The adherence to this constitution preserves for Iraq its free union, its people, its land and its sovereignty.

SECTION ONE: FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
Article 1:
(The Republic of Iraq is a single, independent federal state with full sovereignty. Its system of government is republican, representative 61/27Parliamentary63/47 and democratic. This Constitution is the guarantor of its unity)
Article 2:
First: Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation:
A. No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.
B. No law that contradicts the principles of democracy may be established.
C. No law that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms stipulated in this constitution may be established.
Second: This Constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people and guarantees the full religious rights of all individuals to freedom of religious belief and practice such as

...


What did we expect?!?


Pertinent Links:

1) Extremists force women to hide under head scarves

2) Full Text of Iraqi Constitution