U.S. pushed incoherent, sharia-based constitution on Iraq

Earlier this week, the relentlessly upbeat Mark Steyn assured his readers that the Iraqi constitution, despite its institutionalization of sharia law, should be seen as a glass two thirds full, since it offers genuine federalism and settles the tricky oil issue by distributing oil profits on a per capita basis among all of Iraq’s major groups. According to Steyn, anyone who fails to see the wonderfulness of the constitution is just a pathetic nay sayer.

Steyn’s reasoning could be characterized as follows: “We’re driving together in a car, it’s a beautiful night, wonderful music is playing on the car radio, and the car is heading over a cliff. Hey, the glass is two thirds full! What a great world! Enjoy!”

A more honest and responsible view comes in a must-read article in Tuesday’s New York Sun by Nibras Kazimi, an Iraqi writer living in Washington, D.C. Kazimi says the U.S., in a rush to get the Iraqis to agree on a constitution, any constitution, pushed through an incoherent document that will never stand.

I am voting no on referendum day. I refuse a constitutional text that contradicts itself in its opening clause, stating that no law can be promulgated contravening the fundamental judgments of Islam and ditto should it contravene the principles of democracy.

That just ain’t gonna work. Serious and angst-ridden Muslim thinkers have been trying to reconcile Islamic jurisprudence and democratic values for the last 150 years, and they have failed. What makes anyone think that a politicized constitutional court would be able to find sober and enlightened breakthroughs in reforming Islam for the 1st century?

The first clause of the Iraqi constitution strikes a wedge into the basic unit of Iraqi society: the family. Say a man and a woman seek to divorce The man wants the whole matter adjudicated through the eighth century Maleki Sunni interpretation of Islamic Shariah, while the lady feels she’ll do better under the secular 1959 Civil Law that is on the books. The constitution says that this man and woman have equal rights, but clearly the constitutional court will have to apply a verdict that makes one less equal than the other. With religious demagogues weighing in while their adjunct militias rove the streets, most judges on the panel would opt for self-preservation. Thus, I’m guessing, the lady is going to lose.

Kazimi then mentions a Sunni Baathist named Mahmoud al-Mashadani, who, in a constitutional meeting that included the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, urged that those who kill Americans be honored in the constitutional preamble. Mashadani added that the true heroes in Iraq are the insurgents fighting the occupiers. No one in the meeting, including the U.S. ambassador, protested this outrageous statement. How did the terror supporter Mashadani get into the meeting? He was not elected to the National Assembly (because the Sunnis had boycotted the election last January), but was handpicked picked for the conference (are you sitting down?) by the Americans.

Kazimi concludes:

Maybe a secular rejection of this flawed constitution by popular referendum would set the clock back and bring us back to square one . A new General Assembly would be voted in and a new debate on Iraq’s future would begin; hopefully this time with less American patronage of the Islamists and Baathists.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 31, 2005 12:47 PM | Send