Spendius writes
Quote:If I was to risk an opinion I would say that there is no possibility of separating church and state in Iraq in the forseeable future.After that who knows.Saddam did allow a fair degree of freedom of religious expression.He seems to me to have been more secular than anything else.Perhaps we could have seduced him into a Western way of life had we had a little more patience.As it stands now, by all accounts,religion has been politicised.
Saddam himself was secular. I think, however, he encouraged the Sunni minority to prevail over and make life generally miserable for the larger groups of Shias and Kurds. So long as Christians and Jews remained out of sight, they were of no concern to him. But it would be a stretch to say that any predominently Islamic country is entirely secular including Iraq. Even Turkey, the most democratic of the predominently Islamic nations, definitely favors Islam over any other.
But can Iraq favor Islam and still be democratic? Of course it can. The first Americans came to the New World in search of freedom of reloigion from an oppressive Church of England. They had no intention of granting religious freedom to anybody else, however, and in fact dealt very harshly with their 'heretics' including putting them to death in most unpleasant ways.
Despite all of that, the founders of the United States of America managed to forge an enduring republc based on democratic principles without infringing on an of the myriad religious groups who came here, and in so doing ensured peace among those religious groups. And religion was given a high status via the very first amendment and it was expected and considered highly beneficial that those in government be people of deep faith. Neverthless, the federal government was prohibited to favor any religion over any other or infringe on the right of the people to be as religious as they chose wherever they chose to be religious. And they allowed the religiously monoplies in the various states to remain monopolies until they evolved out of that kind of mindset.
If Iraq does the same, they will be just fine. They can even favor Islam in a predominently Islamic country and they will be just fine. If they should favor the Shias over the Sunnis and Kurds or give give special status to any of their various Islamic sects, they will guarantee civil war for as long as we can imagine. If their national government stays out of it, however, and allows the people to peacefully be whatever they wish to be, I suspect the Iraqis will eventually evolve out of a religious monopoly mindset as well.
To think that our form of government after two hundred plus years of evolvement is the only possible successful model for the Iraqis flies in the face of history.
