As Above, So Below

As seems to be the threat here in the United States, women in Iraq are at risk of losing the rights they had under Saddam and the Ba'ath regime. We already know that extremists are flexing their muscles in southern Iraq but now it seems as though subjugation may become the constitutional law of the land.

"A working draft of a chapter of the new Iraq constitution has language that gives a strong role to Islamic law and could be used to curb women's rights, particularly in personal matters like divorce and family inheritance.

The document's writers are also debating whether to drop a measure enshrined in the interim constitution, co-written last year by the Americans, that requires at least a quarter of the Parliament to be made up of women.

That clause helped establish the current Parliament as among the most progressive in the region, at least in regard to the proportion of female members.

If it holds, the shift away from the more secular and equitable language of the interim constitution would represent a victory for Shiite clerics and religious politicians, who now wield enormous power and had chafed at the influence exercised by the Americans over that earlier document.

The Americans had insisted that Islam be designated as just 'a source' of legislation, for example. Several writers of the new constitution say they intend to, at the very least, designate Islam as 'a main source' of legislation.

One clause in the chapter draft obtained by The New York Times on Tuesday says that the government guarantees equal rights for women, as long as those rights do not 'violate Shariah,' or Koranic law."