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Iraqi Constitution leans towards religious language

A working draft of the new Iraq constitution cedes a strong role to Islamic law and could curb women`s rights, particularly in personal matters like divorce and family inheritance.

The document`s writers are also debating whether to drop a measure enshrined in the interim Constitution, written last year with American officials, that requires at least a quarter of the Iraqi Parliament to be made up of women. The draft obtained by the New York Times on Tuesday says that the government would guarantee equal rights for women, as long as those rights do not "violate Shariah," or Koranic law. American officials and secular Iraqis had kept religious language like that from appearing in the interim Constitution.

If the working draft holds, the shift away from the more secular and equitable language of the interim Constitution would represent a victory for Shiite clerics and religious politicians, who now wield enormous power and had chafed at the influence exercised by the United States over the interim Constitution.