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Historic Day in Iraq

I’ve been watching CNN and Fox News and reading Iraqi blogs such as Healing Iraq, Kurdo's World, and Baghdad Dweller. I’m very proud of the role our brave soldiers played in making this election possible and moved by the courage of so many of the Iraqi people to risk their lives to stand up for their rights by voting.

Now that the people have spoken, what sort of government will the newly elected leaders of Iraq construct? The two key questions are:

1. Will the Shiites and Sunni find a way to peacefully coexist?
2. What role will religion play in the new government?

Many commentators oversimplify this latter question as “will the new government be Islamic or secular?” when in fact there is such a wide spectrum of possibilities between, say, Afghanistan under the Taliban and France (though ironically both would be inclined to prohibit students from wearing crosses to school).

The recent election here in the U.S. and the court cases involving “gay marriage” and the pledge of allegiance remind us that many (perhaps most) American are uncomfortable with a militantly secularist government. If Americans feel this way, it seems safe to assume that most Iraqis would not welcome a French- or Dutch-model secularist government either. On the other hand, an Iranian-model theocracy run by Iraqi Shiite clerics would be equally unacceptable to the Sunni minority and would likely plunge the country into all-out civil war.

So it seems that Iraqis must forge a comprise and find a middle way between the two extremes. For inspiration they might look to American history. The United States has always been a Christian nation, yet to forge a successful federal government our Founding Fathers realized that they could not establish a national church or restrict the free exercise of religion. If they had tried to do so, the Puritans of New England, the Anglicans of Virginia, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Catholics of Maryland, and the many other Christian sects throughout the colonies would never have banded together and we would have become the 13 disunited states of America.

On the other hand Christian values have shaped both the national government and culture. On the cultural side we have “In God We Trust” on our coins, frequent references to “Almighty Providence” and “God Bless America” in the public speeches of nearly every President in history, and the celebration of public holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. Beyond the symbolic, Christian values have shaped our policy and been prominent in the national political dialog, for instance both sides in the great debates over slavery tried to invoke the Bible to justify their position. The territory of Utah was denied statehood until its Mormon-dominated government agreed to outlaw polygamy, indicating that only the mainstream Christian definition of marriage would be granted legal standing in our country.

This compromise served us well and held our nation together for over 200 years, though of late some cracks have begun to appear in that foundation. The newly-minted Iraqi government should follow a similar model: keep the symbols of public Islam intact, such as the Arabic for “God is Great” on the national flag. Observe public holidays on Islam’s holy days. Do not attempt to exclude religious leaders or arguments derived from Islam or the Koran from the public debate. At the same time, the government should not establish Shiite Islam as the state religion, and must guarantee the rights of all Iraqis, whether Sunni, Christian, Jewish, or otherwise, to freely practice their chosen faith. If their government so constituted survives for 200 years, today shall be remembered as a very historic day indeed.

posted by The Jabberwock @ 6:28 PM