Basra: Emerging democracy, disappearing freedoms

[Said1]

I pasted the entire article because the site requires registration.

Restrictive religious rule dismays many in Basra

Emerging democracy, disappearing freedoms

11:36 PM CDT on Wednesday, July 27, 2005

By TOD ROBBERSON / The Dallas Morning News

BASRA, Iraq – The threats started circulating at the University of Basra's campus shortly after a group of conservative Shiite Muslim religious parties won regional elections and gained control of the government this spring.

Anonymous fliers advised women not to walk around campus without their hijabs, or head scarves. Men and women were told not to wear tight-fitting, Western-style pants. Violators would receive a verbal warning, followed by some form of physical punishment if the behavior persisted. Then death.

Basra's new restrictive lifestyle is coming as a shock to many residents who oppose the strong religious orientation of their new provincial government. Basrans say that when they welcomed the arrival of democracy and participated in January's national elections, the result was not quite what they bargained for.

With reports out of Baghdad this week that the Iraqi constitution now being written calls for a strongly Islamic state, possibly including limits on women's rights, the situation in Shiite-dominated Basra could signal the direction for the country.

"You rarely see women walking around the university campus anymore without a hijab," said Iman al-Bahily, a human-rights worker in Basra. Before the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, she added, "You saw women without hijabs all the time. Nobody cared."

Ms. al-Bahily said she prefers to wear a hijab, "but this is a woman's right to decide whether to wear it or not," she said. "It's not for anyone else to impose on us."

In late April, a group of students from the College of Engineering decided to have a co-ed picnic, complete with popular Arabic music, soccer and men-only dancing. According to witnesses, police and Shiite militants sealed off the campus without warning, surrounded the group, and beat the students with sticks, severely injuring several. A Christian girl was hospitalized.

Although many conservative Shiites say they have not been markedly inconvenienced by the new government's enforcement of Islamic codes of behavior, minority dissenters such as women, Christians and Sunni Muslims say their lives have taken a sharp turn for the worse.
Losing liberty

"Sometimes you walk on the street, and you hear people teasing you: 'Why aren't you wearing a scarf?' Some girls don't take it seriously, but I think many of them are frightened," said Juliana Daoud Yusuf, a Catholic and editor of the Basra newspaper al-Akhbar. "We've lost some kind of liberty. We feel uneasy about these things, but I don't think that means minorities should just give up."

In general, she and others said, the changes have been almost imperceptibly slow. Unmarried couples have stopped holding hands in public. Liquor stores have disappeared from the streets of a city that, in the 1970s and '80s, was a favored weekend hangout for fun-seeking Kuwaitis taking advantage of legal drinking and gambling here.

"We had our rights, but now we're losing them," said a Shiite academic who would identify herself only as Professor Jinaa. Once she was proud to display her colorful clothing and stylish hair, she said, but now she covers everything but her hands and face, keeping her hair tightly tucked under a hijab.

"Do you think that what the Americans did here was introduce democracy? ... This is going to get worse. It's self-evident," she added, saying the government had fallen into the hands of savages. To protest is to risk beating or even death. "Our future is a black one."

As long as the rules were changing slowly, few dissenters were willing to mobilize, Ms. Yusuf said. But Basrans were jolted by the severity of the attack in April on the picnicking students.


Attack on campus

A witness said that around 300 students had gathered on the campus for a fairly low-key afternoon. Although men and women sat together in groups, there was no overt contact between them, the witness said. The music was not loud.

Suddenly, police arrived at the university gates, assisted by militants from the Shiite religious party led by the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The witness, who declined to give his name, said the attackers fired weapons in the air and ground, then a Shiite cleric shouted: "Beat them. Beat them without mercy. Beat the sinners."

The resulting public uproar prompted the al-Sadr party to apologize a few days later, but the party's director of cultural affairs, Sheikh Abu Zahra, sought to justify the attack. "There was an outrage against Basran society and a violation of Islamic rules of behavior. That's why we did our job to confront this violation," he said.

Christian women should follow the same rules about covering their heads because, "if you look at their pictures, the Virgin Mary always has her head covered," he said. "This is documented. We believe she also wore a hijab."

As for police involvement in the campus raid, Sheikh Abu Zahra explained that "they rushed to the scene, motivated by their own morals to try to control the picnic."

Part of the reason for the attack, he said, was that the students appeared to be celebrating disrespectfully after a bomb attack in the central city of Al Hillah by insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian Sunni. The bombing, more than a month before the campus raid, killed at least 125 people outside a police recruiting center in Al Hillah, a mainly Shiite city.

"Instead of being sad, they held a picnic. They celebrated side to side with Zarqawi as he took responsibility for this bombing," Sheikh Abu Zahra said.

Other Shiite dignitaries were reluctant to criticize the campus raid openly, although several said they did not expect to see it repeated. Still, it has raised concerns among leaders of minority religions.
Freedom vs. force

"Some people have this idea that they can tell others how to behave," said Gabriel Kassab, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Basra. "They think they have the right to do this because everyone in Iraq has freedoms now. But that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. You cannot use force."

Sheikh Abdul Karim Nasser Muhammad al-Khazraji, a senior Sunni cleric, said the Sunnis in Basra have suffered more than anyone under the new government. Arbitrary police searches and arrests are common, he said.

"We just buried a Sunni man who died in police custody," he said. Photos of the man showed signs of torture: He was missing an eye, and his hands were burned and fingers blackened, apparently from an electrical shock.

The cleric acknowledged that Sunnis have been behind many bombings and attacks on police stations around the country, but he said the entire Sunni community should not be punished as a result.

"Just because Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, they treat us as if we were all sympathizers," he said. "They don't understand that we suffered, too, and now we are suffering again."

NEW RESTRICTIONS

While Basra has long been more progressive than other parts of Iraq, especially since the fall of Saddam Hussein, times seem to be changing:

University women are advised not to walk around campus without their hijabs, or head scarves.

Men and women are told not to wear tight-fitting, Western-style pants.

Unmarried couples have stopped holding hands in public.

Liquor stores have disappeared.

Link

 

[rtwngAvngr]

hmm. well . um. er.

 

[Said1]

hmm. well . um. er.

What?

 

[rtwngAvngr]

What?

I'm trying to articulate speechlessness.

 

[Said1]

I'm trying to articulate speechlessness.

Over what, the content of the article?

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Over what, the content of the article?

yep

 

[Said1]

yep

Anything specific.

You're making this very hard. Are you not feeling well?

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Anything specific.

You're making this very hard. Are you not feeling well?

Actually I do feel like I might have a slight fever.

 

[USViking]

I pasted the entire article because the site requires registration.




Link

The fear has been lurking within me, and I
have never voiced it until now, that we may
end up with something worse than Saddam
in the form of another Islamic theocracy no
closer to to the superior ideals and practices
of Western governance than any of several
other monstrocities in the Muslim world.

Worse, suppose they start in on a nuclear
WMD program? They have the same ability
to do so that Saddam did.

 

[Said1]

The fear has been lurking within me, and I
have never voiced it until now, that we may
end up with something worse than Saddam
in the form of another Islamic theocracy no
closer to to the superior ideals and practices
of Western governance than any of several
other monstrocities in the Muslim world.

Worse, suppose they start in on a nuclear
WMD program? They have the same ability
to do so that Saddam did.

It's not surprising to see control stemming from the religious community making a come back. I think it's safe to say that most Iraqis identify strongly with a tribe, and are more loyal to their clans or tribes than to the government. Your lineage determines your position and the closer your family tree can be traced to Mohammad (or whomever) the better. This not only applies to Imams, it applies to everyone. Saddam was not above manipulating of tribal identity and tribal values for his own benefit, that never went away, only control of the general population by the religious community was eliminated (supposedly).

 

[USViking]

It's not surprising to see control stemming from the religious community making a come back. I think it's safe to say that most Iraqis identify strongly with a tribe, and are more loyal to their clans or tribes than to the government. Your lineage determines your position and the closer your family tree can be traced to Mohammad (or whomever) the better. This not only applies to Imams, it applies to everyone. Saddam was not above manipulating of tribal identity and tribal values for his own benefit, that never went away, only control of the general population by the religious community was eliminated (supposedly).

If you are saying that tribalism will prove to be
a permanent bar to the unity needed to mount
a nuclear WMD threat, I hope you are right, but
I think it is a thin reed to count on.

There seems at this point no hope at all for
separation of Mosque and State, and the
survival of the secular culture which was the
one positive element fostered by Baathism.

 

[Said1]

If you are saying that tribalism will prove to be
a permanent bar to the unity needed to mount
a nuclear WMD threat, I hope you are right, but
I think it is a thin reed to count on.

Actually no, that wasn't what I was saying.

There seems at this point no hope at all for
separation of Mosque and State, and the
survival of the secular culture which was the
one positive element fostered by Baathism.

That is what I was saying more-or-less.