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Allah and democracy can get along fine - -

By Dilip Hiro

Allah and Democracy Can Get Along Fine

By DILIP HIRO
""
Published: March 1, 2005

Doha, Qatar

WITH the emergence of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance as the majority party in Iraq's National Assembly, the scene is set for the drafting of a permanent constitution that will specify the Shariah, or Islamic law, as the main source of Iraqi legislation. This prospect is sending a chill down the spines of many Westerners, who see it as a preamble to the rise of a theocratic regime in Baghdad that would be a far cry from the liberal, secular Iraq envisioned by the Bush administration.

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But such concerns are unwarranted. Just as in the West there are many constitutions based in varying ways on Christian morality, there are several models of an Islamic state. Instead of fretting, Americans and other Westerners would do better to examine how Iraq's neighbors have melded religion and government, and how well or badly they have succeeded in joining the modern world.

Obviously, the greatest worry is that Iraq will follow in the footsteps of Iran. Tehran's theocracy is based on an idea called "the rule of the jurisprudent," a concept that was developed in its modern form by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution. Under the rule, clerics participate in the day-to-day running of the country, and have the power to ensure that all laws and regulations conform with Islam and the country's constitution.

It is highly unlikely, however, that Iraq will choose this path. Sunnis do not subscribe to the doctrine of rule of the jurisprudent, which is rooted in Shiite history and ideology. And while Iran is 90 percent Shiite, at least 35 percent of Iraqis are Sunnis, including both Arabs and Kurds. Since the interim constitution gives the Sunni Arabs and Kurds veto power over the permanent constitution when it is put to a public referendum, there is no chance that a Shiite legal concept will become the foundation of the country's law.

What Westerners tend to forget is that Iran is not the only Persian Gulf state to mix elements of Islam and democracy. Consider, for example, Iraq's neighbor Saudi Arabia and the small state of Qatar.

Last month Saudi Arabia held elections for seats in local councils for the first time in its 73-year history, a step that Qatar had taken six years earlier. The Saudi government made a great show of heralding the vote as historic, and cleverly sponsored an international antiterrorism conference in Riyadh, the capital, on the eve of the poll to attract foreign journalists who might otherwise not have bothered to cover the local elections.

But this official enthusiasm cannot hide the fact that the Saudi regime first promised political reform - including a written constitution and a largely elected national "consultative council" - in 1962. Thirty years passed before King Fahd issued the country's Basic Law; and he did so by royal decree rather than through any legislative process. When the long-promised consultative council was created in 1993, its members were chosen by the king rather than elected, and authorized merely to question cabinet ministers' decisions.

This helps explain why Saudis were so distrustful of their government's promise of taking a first step toward democracy that only a quarter of eligible voters registered, and only two-thirds of those went to the polls. And, of course, women were not allowed to vote, just as they are not allowed to drive and are required to veil themselves from head to toe. The religious police, armed with canes, often hit the ankles of those women who dare to show them in public.

In addition, alcohol, movies and dancing in public are banned. There is strict censorship of the news media and of books, whether published domestically or imported. Only Muslims are allowed to worship. Christians are not even permitted to wear jewelry containing a cross.

Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia, and all legislation is derived exclusively from the Shariah. Members of the governing House of Saud belong to the puritanical Wahhabi sect within Sunni Islam, and the religious legitimacy of the royal household is underwritten by the Supreme Religious Council, nominated by the king.

Things are quite different in Qatar. As the Saudi men went to the polls, officials and the news media here watched with a mix of quiet approval at the idea and regret at the disenfranchisement of women. Most of all, it made Qataris feel proud of their own political system. After all, they had their first local elections, based on universal franchise, in March 1999.

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As in Saudi Arabia, the ruling family of Qatar is Wahhabi. And, here too, the Islamic Shariah is the main source of legislation - it states in Article 1 of the Qatari Constitution, which was ratified by referendum in 2003, that "Islam is the state's religion and the Islamic Shariah is the main source of its legislations."

Nonetheless, Qatar has a relatively democratic political system. The Constitution



    
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