George Bush -Liberator of Men (Only)

I found this rather interesting. While we continue to "liberate" Iraq, some Iraqis are more liberated than others. Juan Cole picks up the story:

...a draft of the new Iraqi constitution contains a provision that puts personal status law under the authority of religious judges. Marriage, divorce, inheritance and other such matters would be judged according to the religious law of the community to which the person belonged. This step would be a big set back for women's rights in Iraq.

In the kind of medieval interpretation of Islamic law being envisioned, women would get half the inheritance that their brothers do. Their testimony would be worth half that of men in court (making it almost impossible for a woman to convict her rapist). It would allow men to summarily divorce women but deprive women of any similar right to divorce their husbands. In Shiite Islam, it would bring back formally the practice of temporary marriage, whereby a man could contract with a woman for, say a two-week marriage while he was away from his usual family. The provision that a quarter of seats in the Iraqi parliament go to women will certainly be gotten rid of by the Muslim fundamentalists, now or later.

Bush and his officials have been scathingly critical of Iran's governmental system, including lack of rights for women. But they have cast the shadow of medieval jurisprudence over 15 million Iraqi women.

It has seemed to me for some time that if we aren't creating a failed state in Iraq we, at best, are creating another Iran. More likely we are creating a combination of modern Iran and Lebanon circa 1975.