BAGHDAD — When U.S. troops entered Baghdad, members of the Iraqi Women's League, a pro-democracy group suppressed under Saddam Hussein, cheered.
But these days when members gather in their shabby office, the talk is of an unexpected consequence of the dictator's overthrow: a decision by the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council to replace the country's civic family laws with Islamic Sharia.
"We had a war with a tyrant regime, but now we have another kind of war," said Aida Ayeedi, a teacher at the College of Agriculture in Baghdad. "This war is with those religious men who think that women are just instruments to bear children and create the next generation."
Pushed through with little discussion, primarily by the Shiite Muslim members of the council, the measure would shift women's fates from the hands of judges to those of clerics, most likely chosen by their husbands, who may have little commitment to protecting their rights. For many women, that would roll back what they had under Hussein, who granted them a measure of personal if not political freedom -- albeit one spiked by a constant fear for their families.
Technically, the measure cannot go into effect until it is signed by the U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq, and it is unlikely that L. Paul Bremer III, a strong proponent of involving women in governance, would do so. But as soon as the U.S. hands over power to Iraqis this summer, it could be enacted.
"We can't ever let this law be passed," said Maysun Damluji, an architect who is serving as deputy culture minister and is organizing a grass-roots movement to block it.
The measure's passage highlights the danger that Iraqi sovereignty will fail to yield the pluralistic democracy with protection for individual rights that President Bush has set as his goal. The peremptory manner in which Sharia was approved also suggests that at least for the moment, it will be difficult for underrepresented groups such as women to wield political influence in Iraq.
Iraqi women are perhaps the most diverse in the Arab world. In an hour's walk through the busy Karada shopping neighborhood in Baghdad, one can encounter highly Westernized professionals who eschew head scarves known as hijab, wear pantsuits and look people squarely in the eye. But there are also women covered by the full black robes known as abayas, wearing tight black scarves that reveal not a strand of hair. And there are those in between, who wear loose, shapeless clothing in neutral or pastel shades, their heads covered casually with hijab, their hair visible.
Of course, clothes do not make the woman. There are professionals who wear abayas and homemakers -- both religious and secular -- who wear Western clothes. But in general those who most fear the new move toward Sharia are those who are most educated. Although in Iraq -- as in the rest of the Arab world -- the community generally holds the paternalistic view that women need the protection of male family members, women have enjoyed some measure of progress.
"Iraq has had women doctors for decades, for example.... This will make things very difficult," said Damluji, whose aunt and mother were two of the nation's first doctors. "That's why we must work very hard to change it."
The law under Hussein was a progressive amalgam of the most generous Sharia rules toward women -- drawn from each sect -- on marriage, divorce, custody of children and inheritance, according to lawyers and judges. Although women were never treated better than their male counterparts, under Iraq's civil law at least a judge rather than a cleric heard their cases in matters of divorce and child custody, ensuring a measure of equity regardless of the woman's sect or ethnic background.
Lawyers and judges who have read the measure say there would be no need for their services anymore.
"This operation needs a cleric, not a judge," said Latif Khalil Hamdani, a judge in the Mansour neighborhood family court. "They don't need us."
If the new system goes into effect, couples of different sects will get different answers to the same questions.
"It would be variable, it's going to create problems," Hamdani said. "Every cleric is going to base his opinion on his reading of Sharia. It will be his personal view."
But in a reflection of the societal reticence surrounding any comment that could be interpreted as a lack of faith in the wisdom of the Koran, every judge and lawyer interviewed insisted that Sharia law was superior to civil law. One senior judge took out a booklet on the civil law and read aloud from it to demonstrate how much of it had been culled from Islamic religious texts.
"Sharia is from God, the law is man-made, and Sharia is better because what comes from Allah is fixed," said Kadhim Jubori, 55, who has practiced family law for 33 years in Baghdad.
