The situation in Iraq in the last few months shows that the US has decided to reward all those the Saddam regime had punished, including religious leaders, by allowing them to participate in politics. It is trying to shape a political reality in a country that is living in a temporary power vacuum.
But it does seem strange that the US, which spent half of the 1980s and most of the 90s battling with religious groups, both Sunni and Shiite, should suddenly want to open doors for them on this vast stretch of land and in a country it considers strategically important.
Strange too because it was Washington that rejected the religious groups — Christian and Islamic — in the Balkans. It fought them in Yugoslavia and insisted on creating a civil government that brings all groups together, bar the religious ones.
The aim was to prevent religious clashes. Why then does the US not give Iraq the same chance and distance religious leaders from the political arena? Doing so would not exclude the Shiite majority. On the contrary: it will rid the country of religious complications.
The option to elect a Shiite president and government of a Shiite majority is a natural result of a system that votes for individuals.
While it is true that the deposed dictator excluded religious forces from the Iraqi arena, he also banned all other movements and symbols and even executed many of his friends and relatives.
To pretend therefore that the religious leaders must now be given power to compensate them for their deprivation is absurd.
Nothing prevents these men of religion from entering the political arena as individuals in civilian clothes — to participate like any other candidate, without quota, guarantees or special protection.
Putting them in positions of influence from the start has nothing to do with democracy. It is merely an attempt by Washington to appease.
But if they are allowed into politics under cover of democracy, Washington will end up creating the second religious state in the region after Iran, at a time when Iran itself is slowly divesting itself of religious governance.
Of course Iraq needs to restore the rights of religious organizations, but it does not need to give religious leaders political rights above others.
For more than a century Iraq has been well known for its civilian society. Mosques have never administered agriculture or industry, nor the central bank or the foreign ministry or the army. The Americans will have to take the blame if they turn Iraq into a sectarian arena by opening it up for men of religion in the name of democracy.
Democracy means giving the majority the right to decide. It doesn’t mean handing the religious leaders the gift of using the majority as they please.
