As the politicians in their country race to finish a draft constitution, Iraqi women are calling for equality and the implementation of the United Nations's international bill of rights for women. They also are asking for the selective application of Sharia, or Islamic law, in the constitution.
Those two positions might seem contradictory, but secular Iraqi women consider a careful choice of certain aspects of Sharia law to be a way to forge a compromise between seeking equality for women and appearing to capitulate to Western values.
In fact, the two forms of law may not be incompatible. Muslim women scholars are revealing the progressive nature of the early Muslim community of Muhammad's 7th century Arabia, and are calling for a renewal of this progressive Islam today.
But they have to confront the fact that the practice of Islam as a faith, a way of life and a legal system varies from place to place. Indonesia is not Turkey is not Morocco is not Iraq. Moroccan king Muhammad VI recently signed into law the Mudawwana, or new Islamic law, that gives women equal rights. But that does not mean that Iraqi women can expect the same to happen under their new Shiite-dominated government.
The degree to which the implementation of Islamic law promotes women's rights depends on who is designated to be the interpreter of the law. Many jurists in the Middle East have been trained in traditional sciences of interpretation and legal reasoning that tend to be misogynist. The role of such men in a new Islamic system worries women who would like Islam to play a role in their lives but who fear its wrongful application.
Women may choose to wear a veil, but they do not want the law to enforce the veil. They may tolerate co-wives, but they do not want polygyny enshrined in the constitution. Most reject the Qur'anic verses that consider a woman's testimony to be worth half of a man's witness, or that allow men to beat their wives if they consider them to be recalcitrant.
Then there are more dangerous issues to resolve, like rape. While 9th century jurists tried to define it and legislate appropriate punishment for perpetrators, some of today's Islamist regimes tend to equate rape with adultery. Adultery entails punishment for both the rapist and his victim.
What parts of the Sharia do these Iraqi women want and which do they reject? And will they be allowed to participate in the selection? These difficult questions remain as women seek to put ancient law into contemporary practice.
For many Muslim women, the information revolution has brought with it a kind of feminist revolution. It has put women in touch with each other through an Internet that allows them to sit at home alone and unmonitored and to reach out to communities of women across the globe. The Internet challenges age-old hierarchies and provides space for new voices.
Additionally, women are entering television broadcasting in unprecedented numbers. Their growing visibility in satellite television with its reduced censorship and transnational reach is empowering women to speak out.
The message of women's rights and equality is now reaching beyond the educated, mostly urban women to empower the previously ignored majority of women whose rural location and illiteracy excluded them from participating in public debate. Women everywhere followed the campaign for women's suffrage in Kuwait and the pressure was such that the government finally relented earlier this year. This is the hope that Iraqi women now cherish.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi in 2003 compelled many to reconsider their stereotypes of Muslim women as passive and invisible. As the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to be so honored, Judge Ebadi publicly confronted the status quo to bring about real change for women in her country. Like her, Muslim women in Iraq today are claiming their right to be full members of their nations, their communities and their religions.