Thursday, July 28, 2005

I was reading the draft of the Iraqi constitution which is co-written, as I read this morning in the New York Times, by the US ambassador in Iraq. What a lousy document. It refers everything to the authority of religious laws, and it stipulates on the appointment of clerics in the Federal Constitutional Court which determines the constitutionality of all laws promulgated in the country. On the gender question, it says: "the state guarantees the basic rights for women and their equality with men in all spheres according to the terms of Islamic laws, and helps them to reconcile their duties toward the family and their work in society." And Iraq is supposed to be "liberated"?