Sydney Morning Herald, December 21
From an article entitled “US hopes of secular Iraqi state fade away” -
…a religious alliance is in the box seat. These parties are already imposing a strict religious code on daily life across swathes of the country and are closely aligned with neighbouring Iran, one of George Bush’s “axis of evil” enemies.
I have generally been a skeptic about the rationale for the war, though I haven’t had much chance to comment on it here (and won’t do so in detail now). This observation in the Herald adds to my concern. The US can put democracy in place, but if fundamentalist Islamic thought dominates public opinion, it’s not clear to me that that will be conducive to the kind of freedoms that are generally valued in the West, nor the generally cooperative attitude to international relations to which most Western nations subscribe.
Of course freedom is not an absolute, and maybe a measure of personal freedom can co-exist with a fundamentalist religous government. It will be interesting, however, to see what provision is made for religous and political freedom.