All Iraqis, After All

Those looking for positive political signs from Baghdad will be encouraged by a recent meeting in Copenhagen. For four days toward the close of February, roughly two dozen Iraqis — an impressive group including two government ministers, authoritative representatives of large and small religious communities, leaders from all areas of the country, and several members of parliament — convened to discuss the relationship between politics and religion, ways to advance human rights, and steps to further reduce and eventually eliminate violence in their country.The group included Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowafak al-Rubayei, the human rights minister, Wajdan Shamo Salim (a Christian woman, by the way), Sunni and Shi’ite leaders and leaders of the Assyrians, Mandaeans, Yezidis, Chaldeans, and Armenians, the prime minister’s personal imam, and the chairwoman of the Women’s Forum of the Iraqi Interreligious Congress, who is a Faili Kurd.The resulting agreement — outlined in two dense pages called “The Copenhagen Accord” — is highly encouraging for anyone looking for signs that Iraqi leaders are increasingly determined to come to grips with their own problems and assume responsibility for the solutions.That they convened at all was significant, all the more so against the background of the latest violence in Denmark, wrongly but publicly attributed to Muslim rage against the republication of the cartoons featuring Mohammed. (In fact, the riots started when Danish police arrested some Muslim drug smugglers, days before security forces announced they had thwarted a plot to assassinate one of the cartoonists, the event that led to the republications.)A few invitees cancelled, but most came.The driving force behind the conference was Andrew White, the 43-year old Anglican Canon of Baghdad, who has been tirelessly urging ecumenism on Iraqis for the better part of a decade, and he received vigorous support from the Danish Government and national church.I was the only non-participant in the room, and I witnessed discussions very different from the fractious public debates that characterize so much of Iraqi politics. Within the first hour, all had agreed that: they would not speak of “minorities”; whatever they endorsed would apply to all Iraqis; and their mission was to define policies for the entire society. They agreed to ask the government to eliminate religious identification on the I.D. cards. “We are all Iraqis, after all,” as one of the participants put it.One of the most moving moments came when Canon White said that something had to be done about violence in many Iraqi families. Husbands had to stop beating their wives, and parents had to stop beating their children. The Accord called on the government “to ensure human rights and the dignity of all components of Iraqi society, including women, children and the disabled.”Extremism was strongly condemned in the accord, with specific reference to religious language that brands “other people as infidels [takfir].” This grew out of the discussion of whether religion should play an advisory or supervisory role in Iraqi society, and most participants essentially answered “both, but within limits.”When one of the religious leaders insisted that the Koran contained answers to all questions, he was firmly told “perhaps, but there are people here who do not follow the Koran, and they too are Iraqis.” National Security Adviser Rubayei even argued that there is no absolute requirement in the Iraqi Constitution for a rigid application of Shariah law; he said the Constitution simply rejects anything that is in direct conflict with “the pillars of Islam.”I rather suspect that, in keeping with the studied ambiguity of Middle Eastern politics, the answer to whether religion should be advisory or supervisory depends on who asks the question, and in which language.There is at least one such difference between the English and Arabic versions of the Copenhagen Accord itself, reflecting the personal concerns of the signers: the Arabic text speaks harshly of “occupation forces” at one point, which prevented some participants from signing it, while there is no such statement in the English version, which everyone signed. But the conversation suggests that there is plenty of wiggle room if Iraqi leaders want it.The accord calls for “the rule of law” and “a constitutional state,” and there is no reference to Islamic law in either case. The one paragraph addressing religion, calls for tolerance and says that “religion must not be used to justify violence or hatred or to sabotage the civil order.”These people are under no illusions about the quality of their current government. On two occasions the accord attacks corruption, first condemning nepotism and patronage and denouncing those who seek political positions for self-interest, or to enable a party or group to monopolize power. Later on, “administrative and financial corruption” are defined as causes of “the decay of the state and … one of the biggest obstacles to peace, reconciliation and prosperity.”If nothing else, the week in Copenhagen shows that Iraqi leaders are capable of respectful debate and considerable consensus on some of the most fundamental issues they, or any other society, face. Whether or not this consensus will be institutionalized will be answered in the months ahead, but it’s hard to be pessimistic after watching them work — very hard — to reach meaningful agreements, and they are determined to press on. The conference created a permanent committee to interface with the government, and called for a national reconciliation conference to dramatize its urgency.There are several grounds for optimism: some new friendships were forged in those four days, which may mitigate some of the country’s stubborn regional, tribal, and religious sectarianism. The tone and outcome of the conference show that conditions in Iraq are improving — such an event, with such participants, was unthinkable a year or two ago — and the sense of national identity could not have been clearer.The closing banquet, held in a beautiful farm house-cum-restaurant outside town, was a symbolic indication of the long-term vision of the accord’s participants, and perhaps even of the potential of Iraq to be a watershed for the region. The guest of honor was Denmark’s Chief Rabbi Emeritus, Bent Melchior, whose father helped the Danes outwit the Nazis and save most of the country’s Jews, and whose son is at once Chief Rabbi of Norway and a member of the Israeli Knesset.Mr. Ledeen is Freedom Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of, most recently, “The Iranian Time Bomb.”

All Iraqis, After All

All Iraqis, After All

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