Women’s Movements in Iraq – Part XXVI

Gulbahar — Exclusive to Ekurd.net

This is the last part of the Series “Marriage and Family Law in Islam”

Every country has its own intrinsic reason for the decrease or increase in the number of veiled women. What might be true in one country may be considered false in another. However the number of veiled women in the Middle-East rose dramatically in the second half of the 1980’s. In Iraq, the phenomenon came about after economic sanctions on Iraq were imposed in 1991. Ever since, the number of veils is increasing. Two factors always coincide with the rise of veils, poverty and lack of freedom, these two are the fertile grounds for the Islamists and Pan-Arabists.

The position of women in Iraq, as is the case with any other country, cannot be understood apart from its historical stages. During the rein of the Ottoman Empire in Iraq, which ended after World War I, women were totally absent from the public arena. This was due to strict social boundaries imposed on women throughout the Ottoman rein beginning in the late 17th century.

However, as soon as World War I ended, the occupation of Iraq by the British brought numerous victories for women, all the way up to 1958.

The majority of the population in Iraq is Muslim, but divided into mainly two major sects, Shiites form the majority; some estimate them to be 60 percent of the total population. In the absence of an unbiased census, these numbers must be questioned. Sunnis are, according to some, forty percent of the population. This cannot be true, since Iraq has a percentage of Christians in their midst, and yet others who are not Muslim or Christian. There are Yazidis, Shabakies and Sabeans in the South. There was once a sizeable population of Jews who had always lived in Iraq. They were expelled after the establishment of the State of Israel, and some preferred to migrate to Israel or to the West rather than face imminent executions. Anti-Semitism is an Arabic national sport and Iraq was no exception at all.

Shiites in Iraq are Ja’fariyya (one of many different Shiites subgroups) whose sources of Jurisprudence do not follow the Sunnis at all. The latter are governed by the Hanafi school, whose founder, Abu Hanifa was born in Iraq.

The enlightenment period of modern Egypt started in the 19th century. Right from the start, Egyptian rulers tried to modernize the society using the Western example. Unlike other Middle-Eastern countries, Egypt showed a persistent pattern of incorporating Western values into Egyptian society. They did not proceed blindly, but with sensitivity toward Islamic sentiments. However, its most dominant efforts were made in liberating women.

Egypt was the first Middle-Eastern Islamic country to decree education for males and females to be mandatory in article 19 of the 1923 Constitution. This was expanded and reiterated in the 1956 Constitution, a reflection of the earlier revolution of Free Officers, in l952. This revolution brought Jamal Abdul-Nasser in as the first President of the Republic of Egypt. These achievements came about long after many intellectuals in Egypt called for women’s education and equal treatment. Reform is extremely difficult to induce, but it is not an impossible dream.
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Qasim Amen was unique to Egyptians, in demanding liberty and equality for women in all aspects of life, especially in education. Syria and Lebanon followed the same tendencies as Egypt, due, in part, to the different delegations of students who were sent to France and England to obtain their higher education. These returned to contribute as voices in the desert, with little immediate results, but with greater success in inspiring others to begin to think likewise.

Intellectuals, especially from Egypt and Syria, like Qasim Amin, Refa’ Tahtawe, Abbas Mahmoud Al-Aqad, Taha Hussein, although all Muslims, had some modernist views of women. In general, these were the pioneers who inspired all Middle-Easterners to look Westward for fresh air, liberty and constitutional governments.

Iraq, on the other hand, did not have such figures who studied in the West. However, what the Iraqis had were two of the most pro-modern, pro-women’s rights thinkers in modern history: Jamil Sedqi Al-Zahawi (Born in 1863) and Ma’rouf Al-Resafi, who did not spared no opportunity to speak for women’s rights in every area of life, and for the unveiling of women. This was very daring step in a society which was numb from backwardness.

Zahawi visited Egypt during the time of Qasim Amen, and involved himself in its intellectual life. He was inspired by their ideas of liberty, freedom, democracy and women’s liberty. Upon his return to Iraq, during the rein of Namiq Basha, he made sure his voice was heard through newspaper articles, and in poetry. His ideas spread throughout Iraq like fire in a stack of hay, pointing everyone’s attention to education for women. This was a position he never changed, proclaiming “Hijab will not protect girl’s purity, but her education [will.]”

Al-Zahawe, a Kurdish intellectual from Iran, was relentless in attacking the veiling of women, which he considered to be a relic of the past and a nightmare for women. His poetry was inspirational for every male and female to break away from the imprisonment of the past. “Unveiling is like a delightful morning. Veiling is darkness as the night.”

The number of female elementary schools in 1930 in Iraq was only 11, but by 1958 there were 274! This in only 28 years! The number of students jumped from a mere 462 females to 108,603. Middle Schools and High schools (grades 7-9) leaped from only 1 school in 1930 to 65 by l958. The number of students jumped from only 11 back in 1930 to 14,003 by 1958.

“ Leila” was the first women’s magazine issued January 15,1923 in Iraq. The following year, in 1924, the very first women’s organization formed as Asma’ Zahawi, the sister of the great poet. Its declared mission was “revitalizing Iraqi women, and the development of their real identity and role [in order] to improve their social, economical and educational state” [87] The formation of this organization divided the society into two sectors. One vehemently accused the women of spreading anti-Islamic sentiments in order to destroy Islamic values. These were the intransigent, eternal voices of the Islamists. The other sector called for freedom for women and the preservation of their God-given rights.

The first Eastern-Arab Women’s Conference was held in Damascus 1930 with delegations from Iraq. The head of this conference delivered a speech which emphasized women’s position was not one of rivalry with men but complementary to men. Muslim women were not the only advocates of women’s rights; Christian women in Iraq consistently played a major role in these movements, regardless of how much their role was shadowy and secondary to that of Muslim women. The second-class status of Christian women applied as well to Christian men, who were never in higher positions than their Muslim colleagues, regardless how better equipped or skilled they were. There are numerous examples of this pattern of discrimination against Christians throughout the Muslim countries, with the exception of Lebanon.

Although the Constitution of Iraq equalized men and women theoretically, it remained theory without practicality. Six years prior to the establishment of the Republic of Iraq came a most daring demand to the Iraqi Monarchy, via the Iraqi Women’s Union. “We persistently demand from the Iraqi government to treat women politically, socially and economically as equal to men since women are [said to be] as responsible as men, with the same legal obligations and equality in the Constitution.” [88] Finally, upon the arrival of the new government of Abdul Karim Qasim, women’s right to vote and to be elected to public office was granted.

Article two of the Iraqi Law of Personal Status was issued in 1959, based on the recommendations of a panel of experts formed in the previous years. This article decreed that the basis of Civil law is the Islamic Shari’a and all matters of marriage, divorce, custody and religious property (awaqaf) are to be decided by Courts of Personal Status. Religious marriages and divorces must be registered with the courts. The only exception in this article was for non-Muslims. Men could not marry to more than one wife unless the courts see the man is capable financially to do so. The legal age for marriage was to be 18 years old, or could be as low as 15 years old if the person were fit mentally and financially. Such laws, although mandatory for all, were not recognized at all by the Islamists. They claimed these laws were invalid for marriage age and for polygamy. However inheritance laws in the Iraqi Constitution saw that both male and female have equal share, which was a departure from Islamic law. It came from an adaptation of the German law adopted by the Ottoman Empire during the occupation of Iraq.

During the first Baa’thist regime (1961-1963) and the second ( 1968-2003) women’s positions improved dramatically, particularly during the second Baa’thist regime of Saddam Hussein. The secular Baa’thists regimes could not co-exist with the Islamic code of dress. The ever existing problem in the Middle-East has been political instability, dramatically affecting women’s roles in society, most often for the worse.

Saddam’s regime had mandatory laws for education. From 1978-1985, the program for eradicating illiteracy did improve women’s life in Iraq. However, once the economic sanctions on Iraq began (1991-2003) after the Gulf War, Saddam attempted to rally the Islamic world for his own cause. He befriended the Islamists however he could, using religious terminology and religious figures as a mean to give the disputes with America a religious nature. This brought the use of the veil back and thus the inevitable dissipation of women’s roles in society.

Even with the US victory in the Iraq War, the Islamists are on the attack…not only of the US forces, but the Iraqi society in general. Women are now afraid to come out of their homes without a veil. Women in Iraq are about to lose all that was achieved in 80 years of struggle. With the exception of the Kurdish territories, the rest of Iraq is experiencing a rapid and dramatic return of the Hijab. Letters of threat are sent or posted on doors of unveiled women. Efforts at a wholesale Islamization of Iraq, one of the most secular societies in the Middle-East in modern history, are underway by foreign elements who cannot stand freedom for anyone. It is as though Al-Zahawe’s descriptions of the veil did not sink in, at least for now.

Islamists make their small numbers felt everywhere, by terror and threat of terror. In Iraq, the Islamists are claiming that the Hijab plays a pre-emptive role in preventing adultery, prostitutes and sexual corruptions. This re-energizes the Arab men’s fears and jealousy, as well as their desires for dominance once again. The number of unveiled women is small in Iraq now in non-Kurdish areas, but the percentage of prostitutes is clearly evident in the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

Historically, in Iraq, to locate a prostitute, you had to go either to a nightclub in Baghdad or another major city, or you had to go to notoriously famous sections of cities in Iraq. Solicitation of prostitutes was much easier than finding a mosque. Historically, the Palaces of the Abbasid Sultan’s had more maids, concubines and prostitutes than one could imagine, maybe far more than Las Vegas!

Saddam’s regime submitted its perspective on women’s rights to the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women in its session in 1986. Saddam put forward reservations on many Articles of the Convention on the grounds that these provisions are in contradiction with the Islamic law implemented in Iraq.

“His contention was mainly with Article 16, which had to do with equal rights for men and women. Saddam expressed reservations with respect to Article 16 on the basis of countervailing rights that are enjoined in Islamic law for the husband and wife in order to establish a just balance between them. The reason for this reservation was Iraq’s concern to meet the international obligations under the Convention , on the one hand, and its commitment to its own cultural and legal heritage, as represented by Islamic law, on the other” [89]

Women’s Equality in Men’s Paradise

If we agree with Muslims on all of their unsupported claims of equality between men and women on earth with their various justifications and defense of Islamic positions, we certainly need to look at their view of the life to come, or that of Paradise. It is a theological tenet Islam that Paradise is nothing but a men’s club. Their version of Paradise holds absolutely nothing for women, even though Muhammad said that “the next world is under the feet of women and under the shade of the swords.” These are empty words unless we can find some meaningful accommodation for women and some recompense for their suffering on earth.

Will women enjoy similar rights to those for men in Paradise? Are they going to enjoy the company of seventy two ever-virgin men who serve them with red wine in a room furnished with expensive carpets, whom they can use sexually as much as they want and these men will always stay virgins? Is this not simply another Muslim look at what should be spiritual and Heavenly, through the eyes of lust and biology? And why would something which is immoral on earth be moral in Paradise?

This is the last part of the Series “Marriage and Family Law in Islam”

The author is a women’s rights activist. The Marriage and Family Law in Islam series is Exclusive on Ekurd.net. This article is copyrighted and may not be used without the express permission of the copyright holder.

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