Appellate review and judicial independence in Islamic law.

nathan newman,

you are worse than bush on this issue. regardless of what you think of iraqi values you should not be wanting to impose your values on iraq.

'you are worse than bush on this issue. regardless of what you think of iraqi values you should not be wanting to impose your values on iraq.'

Whoa, there's some person named Iraq that has a coherent set of values? who knew?!

Actually though, I think Nathan was probably talking about Iraq the country, see a country is composed of millions of people, many of whom have conflicting values and desires. Sometimes in a country bad people gain enough power to impose their values on the rest of the people, sometimes it also happens that the bad people get help from outside the country in the way of arms etc. and that is very very badddddd.

Now I know it can be very difficult to think about this, what with it seeming that everyone wants to impose their values on everyone else but it can help to keep to some very simple rubrics as to what constitutes reasonable imposition of values. For example if we said that everyone in order to get a governmental position had to complete three years of higher education we might not like it, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing one can really argue against because the education, onerous though such a thing can be, might be actually helpful to the person, but if we said that people of type x always had to walk with their shoelaces untied, or barefoot, or be gangraped and beheaded, why that would strike us as something we might not want to allow, because it is very hard to conceive a reasonable argument as to how this walking with shoelaces untied etc. would ever benefit people of type x, whereas the gangraping, murder thingee would no doubt be considered a negative by anybody it happened to, and in most cultures etc. ever found.

This is of course only one possible argument against what you posted above. I could post more but I don't know that it's actually worth my time.

Basically you argue for the imposition of immense suffering upon powerless people. Fair enough, but then you also seem to want to seen as being especially righteous for so arguing, I'm afraid the only person who could see that as righteousness would be yourself, and frankly your tone struck me as that of a rather self-righteous prig.

The phrase, no law passed "against Islam," struck me as exceedingly and deliberately obscure, and was clearly substituted for something much more frightening, "no law could be contrary to shariah." Almost every modern Middle Eastern state has coped with finding a middle road between the patriarchically inspired Islamic laws, and the less specifically patriarchal laws emanating from Europe and elsewhere in the West. The position of women has constantly improved in a number of countries, as their rights have solidified, but it is ironic that in Iraq under the Baathists, the position of women was stronger than in many other Muslim states. I am not sure, in fact, whether the "compromises" wrought recently during the late night sessions of the Iraqi Constitutional Council were a regression or progression in that matter.

But it was my impression that everyone was hopeful that the "constitution," for whatever it was worth -- and it may be worthless in the long run -- would be a stepping stone to something better in the future.

But why shouldn't we expect the best from Iraqis in deciding what is best for themselves -- even in such peculiar venues as the Iraqi Constitutional Council?