BAGHDAD — As Iraq's transitional National Assembly prepares to approve a new draft constitution as early as today, legal experts and some political leaders warned Wednesday that the charter's explicit endorsement of Islam could give religious hard-liners a tight grasp on a country that was once one of the Middle East's most secular.
In an effort to strike a compromise between the nation's religious and secular communities, Iraq's proposed constitution reserves a central place for Islamic law in the legal system while safeguarding personal freedoms and democracy.
But the text's ambiguous language and apparently conflicting provisions left neither side particularly happy, and if approved, the document probably will be the subject of heated debate in Iraqi courts for years to come.
For instance, the draft constitution makes Islam the "official religion" of Iraq and "a main source" of law rather than "the" source, as many Shiite conservatives sought. But secularists remain concerned about a clause that prohibits any law that "contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam."
Critics fear the provision could be used by religious hard-liners to impose a strict version of Islamic law, such as banning alcohol, restricting women's rights and imposing harsh Koranic punishments such as stoning.
The Iraqi draft constitution also calls for gender equality and privacy rights and prohibits laws that contradict democracy or "basic freedoms" guaranteed by the charter.
"It's not a workable document," said Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, an Islamic scholar and law professor at Emory University. "They brushed their differences under the carpet and crafted language that they could vote for. It's a time bomb that will explode as soon as it's enacted," he said.
An-Naim said a similar move to make laws conform to Islam by Sudan's Arab-dominated government in the 1980s sparked a 20-year civil war when southern Christians rebelled. "It was a disaster."
In Iraq, Iyad Jamal Din, a Shiite Muslim cleric and political activist who opposes mixing religion and government, voiced similar concerns. "It tries to preserve human rights, but within a choking religious society that is a clone of the Iranian system," he said. "I fear this constitution will lead us into a dark society controlled by extremists."
