Iraq's Supreme Federal Court
Now we have a slightly fuller translation of the proposed Iraq constitution, though one that's clearly far from finished. Incidentally Juan Cole noted on his blog that an earlier AP translation was fairly misleading; because I can't read Arabic, I can't say for sure.
Anyway, the question that many secular critics of Iraq's constitution have raised is "what role will Islam play?" The emphasis on it in the opening chapter is a bit unnerving, but it becomes even more nerve-wracking and confusing later on when we get to read about the Supreme Federal Court. Here's a partial list of its functions:
1st -- overseeing the constitutionality of federal laws before they are issued.2nd -- overseeing the constitutionality of the laws and standing regulations.
3rd -- interpreting the text of the constitution.
4th -- ruling in cases that emerge from the implementation of federal laws.
5th -- ruling in disputes between the federal government and the governments of the regions and the provinces and local administrations.
6th -- ruling in disputes between the governments of the regions or provinces.
And who gets to sit on this court?
From Article 90:
2nd -- The Supreme Federal Court will be made up of a number of judges and experts in sharia and law, whose number and the manner of their selection will be defined by a law that should be passed by two thirds of the parliament members.
So, admittedly, not as clear as we might like. Who are the judges? Who are the "experts"? I don't think for a minute that Muslim clerics are somehow naturally opposed to human rights, since Islam is far too decentralized a religion for anyone to be able to point to much unanimity about its meaning. That said, the case of Amina Lawal in Nigeria is a cautionary tale of what can happen when increasingly austere notions of Islamic justice become grounds for differentiation in politically divided societies. That is, divisions in Iraq include fights over the extent to which Islam ought to dominate civic life. One way for some political actors to try to achieve greater authority will likely be in the construction of increasingly atavaistic and pernicious notions of what the Koran says, who may interpret it correctly, and what punishments should befall those who violate its tenets.
Islam isn't itself the source of the problem, at least not in any way that differentiates it from Christianity, Judaism, or any other faith; the problem is instead with the ability to use ancient scripture in modern-day power plays with very, very high stakes. It's a problem for the United States as well, of course. What worries me in this case is that religion is being encoded into the constitution in a dominant and yet ambiguous way, leaving many of the fights for later, but providing the upper hand to those "strict constructionists" who will point to deviation from scripture as the source of the nation's many continuing problems. And there will be victims in their efforts: women, gays, secular critics, etc.
I'm not Iraqi, and it's certainly not my place to critique their constitution any more than I would any other nation's. But Siva is absolutely correct in mocking President Bush's sunny optimism about the nation's democratic prospects. Particularly since the president is so fond of invoking women's rights in the discussion, his speech is symptomatic either of dementia or of a truly mind-boggling capacity for dishonesty.