By Crescent or Cross
One of the more notable developments in post-invasion Iraq is the emergence of the Shiite Muslim community, long suppressed by Saddam’s Sunni-oriented secular state. Generally a minority in most of the Arab world, Shiites constitute about 60% of the Iraqi population, where they have close ties to the enormous non-Arab Shiite majority that dominates Iran. While the point of theological difference between the sects is relatively small, the gulf in cultural values is said to be large. Most relevant to the current situations, it is the Shia who have been the most vocal proponents of the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq. One could hardly imagine this is the result that the architects of the American conquest had in mind.
A Shiite Islamic Republic of Iraq would be a disaster for a few reasons. First, it would be closely allied with neighboring Iran, a heretofore unreconstructed member of the Axis of Evil. How long does anyone suppose their gratitude over liberation would last, considering that the liberator was The Great Satan? Preventing alliance between Iran and Iraq has been a fundamental pillar of American, Turkish and Israeli diplomacy for more than 20 years. Hard to imagine we would allow one to form under the current circumstances.
Second, an Islamic state is always a humanitarian and civil liberties disaster. Oppression of women is not an incidental policy of these people – it is the central organizing principle of political Islam. Theocracies are also not notably tolerant of dissent, freedom of speech, or anything we would recognize as due process of law. I don’t believe American soldiers gave their lives to secure the freedom of Iraqis to stone adulterers and amputate the hands of suspected shoplifters.
And yet, the proponents of exactly this kind of state stand to be the biggest winners should we follow through with our policy of democratizing Iraq. This is no surprise: the demographics of the country were well-known before the war, and even Saddam’s police state had its hands full keeping the theocrats in line. Pundits are fond of reminding us that the concept of separation of religion and government is not a feature of Islamic philosophy or Middle Eastern political culture, and in those areas of the Muslim world where secular governments have emerged, they never gained power through democracy.
This leaves us with an unpleasant choice. If Iraqis are to be free to practice their religion without resort to an Islamic state, then any government cannot be representative of the majority, at least so long as the majority favors theocracy. But if democracy is to succeed, then the population must be secularized to the extent that they acknowledge a separation between religious and civil authority – a separation which they have never seen as necessary or legitimate.
The irony is that the Administration who must negotiate this delicate balance, while representing a secular democracy, is itself neither democratically elected nor secular in outlook. There’s nothing Bush can do about the circumstances under which he was named President, which, partisan objections aside, was simply a poorly-timed manifestation of an inherently undemocratic feature of our electoral system. What makes his situation in Iraq so problematic, however, is his embrace of the policies of the American religious right.
Because Bush is so invested in “the politics of faith” – both organizationally through the Republican party and, from all indications, personally as well – he lacks the language to talk convincingly about the need for secular government in Iraq. His differences with the Shiite ayatollahs are doctrinal, not fundamentally philosophical. They don’t believe in the same religious text, but they both agree on the basic authority of a religious text as the fount of moral and political principles. They don’t believe in the same heavenly machinery intervening in earthly events, but they agree on the basic question of a God who takes an active interest in human events. Most importantly, both see the revealed word of God as the last word in governing human social interactions. Don't buy it? Ask yourself this: would Bush agree or disagree with the statement that the primary role of government is to bring people closer to God's truth? (or, ask him, as someone did during the campaign, who his favorite political philosopher is). Bush isn't an Islamic extremist, of course, but he had a real credibility problem when he tries to tell other people where to draw the line between religion and governance.
Secular government, a necessary precursor to responsible democracy in Iraq, requires the implicit acceptance of faith as a private, rather than public act. Bush simply can’t take that step, because he clearly doesn’t believe it. Absent a certain “faith” in civil rather than religious authority, America can’t impose much-needed liberal-minded (but, in the short term, objectively undemocratic) reforms on Iraqi society without opening itself up to well-founded criticisms of hypocrisy or, worse, Judeo-Christian chauvinism. Since the alternative – democratic political processes that all but guarantee the emergence of a Shiite fundamentalist state – is clearly unacceptable, the Administration finds itself between a rock and hard place, both entirely its own creation.
10:42:47 AM 
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