WASHINGTON (ABP) — Nearly a year after American forces liberated Iraq from the oppressive government of Saddam Hussein, some religious-liberty advocates are worried the country's new constitution won't protect religious minorities.
Members of the Iraqi Governing Council reportedly reached agreement on an interim governing document March 1. It will be formally presented and signed March 3. According to several news sources, it contains a provision establishing Islam as the official religion of the land.
The role of Islam in the nation's laws has been a point of contention, with conservative Shiite members of the council demanding wording that made Islam the primary source of law in the nation. But members of the council reportedly reached a compromise that said Islam would only be “a source” for legislation and guaranteeing religious freedom for minorities, but also saying that no law would be contrary to “the universally agreed upon tenets of Islam.”
All of the council's 25 members — including one Christian — were reportedly satisfied with the compromise.
Iraq had an essentially secular government under Hussein's rule, and Christians and other religious minorities enjoyed a higher degree of religious freedom than in many other majority-Muslim nations.
However, the country's Shia Muslim majority was often brutally repressed by Hussein's government, most of whose leaders were of Sunni Muslim heritage. Now freed from the rule of Hussein's Ba'ath Party, many Shiite clerics have moved to solidify their political power — stoking the fears of international religious-freedom advocates that Iraq may become a theocracy.
The interim constitution would be in effect only until Iraqis hold elections and come up with a permanent constitution. Paul Bremer, the American administrator in Iraq, would also have to sign off on the temporary charter before it takes effect.
The chairman of a federal panel that monitors religious freedom around the globe said the compromise is a good sign but added it is too early to express optimism or concern about the new document. “The current drift of it is — at least according to the newspaper reports — pretty good,” said Michael Young, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
But, Young warned, it will be impossible for most Western observers to assess the document accurately until Arabic-to-English translators take a close look at it. “The rub in all these things is…what does the translation really look like?” said Young, dean of the George Washington University Law School.
Young's commission has previously expressed serious concerns about the status of religious freedom in Afghanistan's draft constitution. Commissioners have worried that document goes too far in enshrining Islamic law and does not do enough to ensure an independent judiciary's ability to interpret those protections. Iraq could undergo similar problems as it drafts a permanent constitution.
In light of that, Iraq's draft constitution “could be problematic — it could be the kinds of things we're worried about,” Young said. “And that all depends on the phraseology.”
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