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Cover Your Hair
Nicholas D. Kristof
BASRA, Iraq -- Still no luck in my quest to help the administration find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But meanwhile, I'm getting the impression that America fought Saddam, and the Islamic fundamentalists won. For a glimpse of the Islamic state that Iraq may be evolving into, consider the street execution of an infidel named Sabah Ghazali. Under Saddam Hussein, Christians like Mr. Ghazali, 41, were allowed to sell alcohol and were protected from Muslim extremists. But lately extremists have been threatening to kill anyone selling alcohol. One day last month, two men walked over to Mr. Ghazali as he was unlocking his shop door and shot him in the head — the second liquor store owner they had killed that morning. An iron curtain of fundamentalism risks falling over Iraq, with particularly grievous implications for girls and women. President Bush hopes that Iraq will turn into a shining model of democracy, and that could still happen. But for now it's the Shiite fundamentalists who are gaining ground. Already, almost every liquor shop in southern Iraq appears to have been forcibly closed. Here in Basra, Islamists have asked Basra University (unsuccessfully) to separate male and female students, and shopkeepers have put up signs like: "Sister, cover your hair." Many more women are giving in to the pressure and wearing the hijab head covering. "Every woman is afraid," said Sarah Alak, a 22-year-old computer engineering student at Basra University. Ms. Alak never used to wear a hijab, but after Saddam fell her father asked her to wear one on the university campus, "just to avoid trouble." Extremists also threatened Basra's cinemas for showing pornography (like female knees). So the city's movie theaters closed down for two weeks and reopened only after taking down outside posters and putting up banners, like this one outside the Watani Cinema: "We do not deal with immoral movies." "We're now searching all customers as they enter the movie theater," said Abdel Baki Youssef, a guard at the Atlas Cinema. "Everybody is worried about an attack." Paradoxically, a more democratic Iraq may also be a more repressive one; it may well be that a majority of Iraqis favor more curbs on professional women and on religious minorities. As Fareed Zakaria notes in his smart new book, "The Future of Freedom," unless majority rule is accompanied by legal protections, tolerance and respect for minorities, the result can be populist repression. Women did relatively well under Saddam Hussein (when they weren't being tortured or executed, penalties that the regime applied on an equal opportunity basis). In the science faculty at Basra University, 80 percent of the students are women. Iraq won't follow the theocratic model of Iran, but it could end up as Iran Lite: an Islamic state, but ruled by politicians rather than ayatollahs. I get the sense that's the system many Iraqis seek. "Democracy means choosing what people want, not what the West wants," notes Abdul Karim al-Enzi, a leader of the Dawa Party, a Shiite fundamentalist party that is winning support in much of the country. Mr. Enzi is the kind of figure who resonates in mud-brick Iraqi villages in a way that secular American-backed exiles like Ahmad Chalabi don't. While Mr. Chalabi was dining in London, Mr. Enzi was risking his life on secret spy missions for the Dawa Party within Iraq, entering from his base in Iran. Four of his brothers and one sister were executed for anti-government activities, and Mr. Enzi was himself sentenced to death in absentia in 1979. He was once arrested in Iraq on a spy mission, but officials did not realize who he was and released him a month later. I found Mr. Enzi brave, admirable and medieval. What should we do about this? I'm afraid there's not much we can do to discourage fundamentalism in Iraq, although staying the course and building a legal system may help. For now, the U.S. seems to be making matters worse by raiding offices of Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who ran an anti-Saddam organization from exile in Iran and who in the past advocated an Islamic government. Cold-shouldering Mr. Hakim is counterproductive. It bolsters his legitimacy as a nationalist and further radicalizes his followers. We may just have to get used to the idea that we have been midwives to growing Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq. Nicholas D. Kristof is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times.
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