New constitutions take shape       

IF A camel is a horse designed by committee, it is not surprising that the constitutions being drafted in Egypt and Tunisia look like curious beasts. Rows have raged over who gets to sit on the drafting committees. The members must bridge classic differences between left and right, and betwixt advocates of parliamentary and presidential systems. And the religious parties that dominate the constituent assemblies in both countries must also square the long-vexed question of relations between Islam and the state, down to whether foreign tourists may still frolic on local beaches.

Since their revolutions almost two years ago the two countries have followed divergent paths. Tunisia’s was the more practical. It held elections a year ago to pick a 217-person temporary parliament. One of its tasks is to devise a constitution. Egypt’s course has been messier. The junta of generals who assumed temporary power charged the parliament, elected last December with a 75% majority of Islamists, with choosing a constitution-drafting board. But courts disputed its first choice of members and then, shortly before presidential elections in June that ended the generals’ tenure, dissolved the parliament too. Just before being disbanded, the parliament selected a different 100-person constituent assembly. The composition of this body, which is heavily weighted towards Islamists, has also been challenged in court, but it carries on in legal limbo.

Oddly enough, however, the two countries have reached a similar point, with their constitution-writing bodies both recently issuing first drafts of their work. In both countries, too, the drafts have stirred a storm of controversy. Secularists have accused the drafters of trimming civic freedoms in the name of religious orthodoxy, while Salafist conservatives have cried foul over what they see as attempts to water down the role of religion, and particularly of Islamic law, or sharia.

Tunisia’s constitutional rumpus has, predictably, been calmer than Egypt’s. The country is small and socially more homogenous, with a strong secular tradition and a more cohesive educated class. Attacks from the Salafist right, despite the shrillness of their tone, have had little impact. The religious radicals are relatively isolated, while Nahda, the more mainstream Islamist party, which won some 40% of assembly seats, has proved flexible in accommodating secular-minded demands. Its leader, Raschid Ghannouchi, recently told Salafist leaders in private that Tunisia’s Islamic character could best be ensured by empowering righteous Muslims through elections and government appointments.

As a result, Tunisia’s draft constitution says nothing about sharia or blasphemy, and relegates questions of religious values to a wordy preamble. Responding to loud protests by feminists and journalists, the drafters have agreed to rewrite provisions that could limit sexual equality and press freedom. In the next few weeks the constitutional draft will be opened to general debate in the assembly. It is scheduled to be ratified in February, well in advance of elections for a full-term regular parliament in June.

Egypt had hopes for a tighter schedule, with a referendum on its constitution before the end of this year, followed by parliamentary elections two months later. This looks increasingly unlikely. Secularists and minority groups, who continue to contest the very composition of the constituent assembly, bitterly oppose much of the current draft. Clauses that speak of freedoms, they say, are undermined by others which would punish vaguely defined forms of blasphemy and which stipulate that no laws should contradict sharia, even though many interpretations of Islamic law could discriminate against women and non-Muslims. Religious conservatives have been just as scathing.

Yet while Egypt’s Salafists and secularists, each of whom won a quarter of parliamentary seats, clash over such issues as sharia, they unite in suspicion that the Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to use the constitution to consolidate its control (it captured nearly half the parliamentary vote and its candidate, Muhammad Morsi, won Egypt’s presidency). This, they charge, is why the draft preserves much of the administrative structure, assigns presidents majestic powers, and safeguards the military, which the Brotherhood seeks to woo, from systematic civilian oversight. With such muddled and competing demands, a camel would be a good outcome.

Rape Pregnancies: Just Another Part of God's Plan

By Amanda Marcotte

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012, at 12:13 PM ET

 

 

Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock at Tuesday's debate

Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who has the misfortune of a name that sounds like a villain straight out of sci-fi/fantasy, is the latest Republican to step into it when it comes to rape and abortion. When asked during Tuesday's debate about whether a hypothetical rape victim should be allowed to get a hypothetical abortion, Mourdock tried to sad-face his way out of being held responsible for the vile words that came out of his mouth: "I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." 

Naturally, many, many people objected to Mourdock painting rapists as just another part of God's plan, like the weather. (What if rapists are actually angels sent from God to make sure that no uterus goes unseeded? Am I blowing your mind?) Considering the centrality of the concept of "free will" to Christian theology, it's a bit strange for Mourdock to simply erase the fact that when a man rapes a woman, he is making a choice to do so, and according to Christians, he's doing so freely. Mourdock was so busy worrying about articulating why he wants to take away women's rights after they are raped that he neglected to remember that rapists are both criminals in the eyes of the law, and sinners in the eyes of his God.

Mourdock's attempts at clarification didn't actually fix this problem: 

Minutes after the debate, Mourdock was already trying to undo the damage. “Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think God ordained or pre-ordained rape? No, I don’t think that anyone could suggest that. That’s a sick, twisted—no, that’s not even close to what I said,” he told reporters—though he reiterated that he believes God determines when conception occurs. “It is a fundamental part of my faith that God gives us life. God determines when life begins,” Mourdock said. “I believe in an almighty God who makes those calls … There are some things in life that are above my pay grade.”

What's interesting about this clarification is it doesn't clarify squat. God preordains the conception but doesn't preordain the rape, or what Paul Ryan gently calls the "method of conception"? At what point does God start ordaining stuff, exactly? Does he wait until you're actually in midrape to jump in and say, "Hey, let's make this one a pregnancy, because I'm thinking this lady hasn't suffered enough." Or did God ordain the conception before the rape started? Does God give the go-ahead for rape only if it leads to pregnancy or he's cool with all rape? And one question from the pro-choice peanut gallery: If God can ordain the rape and the pregnancy that follows, why can't he also ordain abortion?

These questions may seem unserious, but if candidates really do imagine themselves as conduits for God's decisions, we need a little bit more insight into God's decision-making process. He's not speaking for himself, so it's up to the emissaries who claim to work under his authority and wish to impose it on us by law to explain. Perhaps if we really started asking these hard but important questions, we might better realize the utter silliness of letting a silent God who just happens to agree with whatever a candidate wants to believe write our laws for us, instead of sticking with that "freedom of religion" concept that the writers of the Constitution thought was such a nifty idea. 

 

 

 

Libya Grand Mufti: Remove References to Democracy and Religious Freedom From School Textbooks

“Libya’s Dar Al-Ifta’ (the Fatwa office), presided by Grand Mufti Sheikh Sadeq Al-Ghariani, has called on the Ministry of Education to remove passages relating to democracy and freedom of religion from school textbooks,” the article states.

The article also reports that the religious official asked for “clarification” as to why extracts of the Prophet Muhammad’s Sunnah had been deleted. The Sunnah is the second book for Islam jurisprudence after the Quran, according to scholars.

The article cited reporting from LANA, the state-approved news outlet.

“The first was about the deletion of some of the Prophet’s Sunnah within the Islamic education syllabus, and the second addressed the two paragraphs included in the basic education textbooks about religious freedom and democracy,” stated the Libya Herald.

“The statement said, according to LANA, that the Ministry of Education had responded positively to the remarks made by the Grand Mufti and had promised to investigate the reasons behind the absence of the Sunnah texts from the Islamic education curriculum,” said the newspaper.

The statement claimed the information in the textbooks about Greek democracy might be “too detailed” for students to comprehend and that references to freedom of belief and religion should be removed because “it suggests to younger students that they could choose any religion they wanted,” according to the article.

The article said the Fatwa office warned that because of the public’s religious values the textbooks “could spark public anger.”

Dogma and purity v worldly politics

Forward to the past

TO SELL an idea it helps to keep it simple. This explains the appeal of Salafism, an increasingly wide, bold-coloured stripe on the very broad spectrum of modern Islamism. Its most garish manifestation has been painted in blood by the jihadist brand of Salafists, most notoriously by the holy terrorists of al-Qaeda. The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have deep Salafist roots, as do the rowdy gangs in Tunisia that have lately trashed bars, cinemas and the American embassy. Yet while Saudi Arabia’s dour Salafist version of Islam, Wahhabism, shuns political life and abhors democracy, the Salafists’ Nour Party in Egypt has played politics eagerly and effectively, capturing a quarter of the votes in last year’s general elections.

What links these groups is a belief that Islam has been weakened by centuries of accumulated intellectual baggage. Muslims should dump most of it, the Salafists say, and revert to the ways of their salaf, or forebears. Specifically, they should rigidly follow the model provided by the Prophet Muhammad himself, as recorded in his actions and sayings (around 5,000 of which are generally credited as authentic and unique), as well as by the first three generations of his followers.

In some matters this makes life easy. One should obviously eat with the right hand only, as Muhammad reportedly did. Men should grow beards. Women should cover up. And one should abhor such “innovations” in Islam as Shiism and also Sufism, with—in Salafist eyes—its silly rituals and unhealthy adulation of sainted leaders. Yet choosing which 1,400-year-old saying to apply, or which venerable act to follow, is not always easy. This is particularly so when it comes to the ever-changing intricacies of politics.

For instance, whereas one of al-Qaeda’s better-known tactics has been suicide-attacks, plenty of Salafist scholars condemn the act of suicide itself as an abomination. Some rejected the uprisings that overthrew the “infidel” rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, just because they were sparked by the suicide of Muhammad Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor. Other Salafist preachers agreed with Saudi Wahhabists that it is a sin to go against the wishes of any ruler. But more pragmatic Salafists embraced the Arab spring as a Godgiven opportunity.

The experience of Egypt’s Nour Party is telling. Though educated, city-dwelling Egyptians were shocked by the success of a party founded only last year, Nour has built on a tradition of Salafist sermonising and mosque-building that goes back a century. Long popular among the poor for their uncompromising views, Salafist preachers had lately been boosted by a surge in private cash from the Gulf. This financed not only fancy websites and some two dozen satellite TV channels, but also a network of charities rivalling that of the milder-mannered Muslim Brotherhood.

Adjusting to the rough and tumble of politics has not been easy. The spotlight of publicity has proven harsh: earlier this year a newly elected Salafist MP was caught in flagrante fondling a young lady in a parked car; another who claimed that his bruised face was the result of a politically motivated assault turned out to have had a nose job. Hardest of all has been the predictable tension between Nour’s roots in preaching the Salafist “call”, with its emphasis on purity and authenticity, and the practical demands of political tactics.

Many party people balked when its leaders, reckoning Nour would win more influence, endorsed a relatively liberal Islamist candidate in Egypt’s presidential elections earlier this year. Instead they backed a populist Salafist, Hazem Abu Ismail, who was dismissed by party elders as a loose cannon.

Nour’s members also differ on how to handle the Muslim Brotherhood. The fellow-Islamist group is Egypt’s strongest political force, and many Brothers have Salafist leanings. But its members are sworn to exalt strict internal Brotherhood discipline over religious dogma. One Salafist preacher, Sheikh Muhammad Said Raslan, has condemned the Brothers as “the greatest deception in the name of religion that this country has ever faced.”

Yet even as some Salafists have threatened an armed revolt in case the constitution currently being drafted, largely under Brotherhood influence, proves insufficiently “Islamic”, the Nour Party also speaks of teaming up with the Brothers against secular parties in Egypt’s upcoming parliamentary elections.

Differences between the party’s more dynamic political wing and its mosque-bound base recently erupted in an effort to unseat Nour’s politically astute party leader, Emad Abdel Ghafour. The two sides have now agreed to put off their struggle until after the elections, but tensions are likely to bubble up again.

It is not that the religious sheikhs are calling for a retreat to the preaching role, says Stephane Lacroix, a French scholar of modern Islamism who sees the Nour Party as relatively mature compared to Salafist movements elsewhere. Hotter-headed groups in countries such as Mali, Nigeria and Somalia, showing too much zeal with hand-chopping and music bans in the name of “authentic” sharia, have ended up alienating the people they intended to rule. In Egypt “they have moved into politics for good”, says Mr Lacroix, “but are not yet quite ready to play by rules of political logic that are different from doctrinal logic.” Perhaps Egyptians, by the time they next vote, may notice that mixing religion and politics is not so easy after all.